Add Character

As many of my students know, I'm always harping on about CHARACTER, to a point where it became a meme in my last AAU class. Thank you George...

To me it's just more interesting to see a character make choices that are influenced by their emotional state, by what's happening to them via outside forces (through another character or environmental forces, etc.) and so on as opposed to seeing just movement (like a dance or martial arts).

You can have underlying character traits inform the character's acting choices. Your character can be honest, loyal, determined, adventurous, pessimistic, mean, rude, greed, cruel, picky ,silly, fidget, deceptive, etc. etc.

You can also have gestures or body tics that are specific to one character. It can be tricky to put that into one shot as it might seem repetitive or just look like bad acting:

... but it's still something to think about. As mentioned above, the environment can also alter your acting. Take your current acting scene but place it somewhere where it's really cold. The character's posture is going to change, some gestures might be faster or reduced in their scale maybe because he/she wants to go back to putting his/her hands into the coat pockets or whatever. 

A simple gesture or someone grabbing a prop is going to look different depending on your character's emotional state of mind, character trait, environment, or even if the character is familiar or unfamiliar with the environment and/or prop(s).

All in all, every move should hopefully tell the audience something about your protagonist/antagonist/extra/etc., so don't forget: add character. :)

Lecture on smear frames - Jeremy Lazare

Every Frame A Painting

Check out the playlist of Every Frame A Painting, if you're into analyzing filmmaking techniques. Below are two examples.

iAnimate Lab - No21 - Brett Pascal

iAnimate Lab - No21 - Brett Pascal from iAnimate on Vimeo.

Stop worshipping animation companies.

Everybody has their own favorite company they want to work for. Each student is different. I see and hear it all the time through my teachings, from AM, to the AAU and in my workshops.

But there is one consistent problem.

As long as you worship your favorite company you won't question teachers who work for that company enough, if at all. You end up being a drone.

Fanboy-ism has always existed and that's fine. I'm guilty of this as well. But there comes a point where it's not helping you. For example. Last week in my class, a student showed me work from another class and I asked what the notes were for his shot. The student recited what he was told to change but when I asked why he had to make those changes, the student didn't know what the reasons were. And that's the problem I see over and over again. Students blindly following what teachers tell them, without asking why.

Is it fear of questioning the wisdom and authority of your teacher? Is it fear that by doing so you might ruin your chances of getting hired at your favorite company that teacher represents?

Teachers don't know everything. They can also be wrong.

Not everything you hear is holy scripture, especially when it comes to performance related advice, since a lot of it is based on a subjective preference. Technical notes you should really follow though. But either way, ask why if you don't understand the notes.

It's okay to question things. How else will you learn? If you don't understand the notes, then the teacher is just animating through you. And the next time you start a similar shot, you will either make the same mistake or ape the notes you were given without understanding the reasons and principles behind it.

As a student you are paying for classes and the teachers are there to help you. Don't just blindly accept every note. That's a waste of time and money.

JD

pic credit

Facial pose can ruin everything

A lot of times maquettes have a cool body pose, but then the face just ruins it all. Enter these two from Star Wars.
The Grievous/Shaak Ti could have been really cool, but look at Shaak Ti's facial expression! Same with Asajj. It's so emotionless, what is going on?!

At least this Anakin one has an expression, but then the eye line doesn't match. Why is he looking above the Tusken Raider? No connection there.

What a bummer!

Now that's a lot better:

Looking at the Dianoga would have been cool though, but at least his pain is clearly visible in his facial expression.

Cloverball - and the importance of having fun

After a brief start in 2008 where I blocked out the first 5 shots I have now finally finished this little sequence last week and I had a blast working on it! But there's a little story behind it.

Back when I was teaching at the AAU I had every class start with a bouncing ball assignment for the first week. It was a great way to see how people would react to it (did they feel like they were above it, were they excited, confused, etc.) and seeing the clips gave me a good idea how each person was attacking an assignment.

Would they do just the minimum (or less), would they think they mastered it yet didn't really, was there more to see than the bullet points were asking or did someone go above and beyond?

Since taking up any kind of animation school demands a lot of work and time behind each assignment and exercise, why wouldn't you try to have the most fun possible? That was always my approach, even if I didn't succeed all the time. Some teachers thought I was just an over achiever, which baffled me. I was just having tons of fun and trying to milk the assignment and push myself. But years later I realized that you have to make sure that your students focus on getting the basics done, and done really well, before they go off and take on crazy stuff.

In my first character animation class, taught by the awesome Lisa Mullins, I learned what "animation jerk off" was. It was this clip:

It was a "getting out of a chair" assignment, which was supposed to last 5 seconds max. I will never forget her reaction to that clip. After an initial compliment on how I seemed to have understood the basic principles of animation (to an extent), she proceeded to rip the clip apart and it was the best critique I've ever gotten and a huge eye opener. My clip was just about moving stuff, it was animation for animation's sake, or "animation jerk off", instead of exploring the character, acting choices and breathing life into a computer rig.

She was so right. At the same time it was also extremely rewarding to just let loose and animate the hell out of something. I still indulge in this to this day, but I try to keep the balance in favor of character instead of movement.

But every now and then, I just like to have fun. And this brings me back to the bouncing ball assignment. What I would explain to the students back then was my view on what constitutes an F, a D, a C and a B, which I've tried to illustrate in the clip below:

(click image to play grading video)

This is of course all subjective and feel free to chew me out ("What?! You think this is a F/D/C/B?!")

Unfortunately, I don't remember seeing anybody go for an all out A with the "go big or go home" attitude. Of course, it also all depended on their skill set, school schedule, etc. but still, I missed the "fun" part in most of the clips.

So what's an A in my distorted point of view? It's a clip where you can tell that someone just ran with an assignment. Of course this can lead to questions like "Do you have a problem with women?" when faced with my very first bouncing ball assignment:

 ... and no, I don't have a problem with women, I was just being stupid and added "bouncy" things to the assignment... and I completely understand the question... (hiding in shame...)

Anyway, as posted at the top of this entry, "Cloverball" was my idea of what a bouncing ball assignment could look like. :)

And here are the usual suspects of video formats: youtube, vimeo and quicktime.

Cloverball from Jean-Denis Haas on Vimeo.

A bit more information regarding the planning of this sequence:

The original idea of doing this over the top bouncing ball, as mentioned, came out of the AAU days and it got mixed with the additional knowledge that I gained regarding camera work (thanks to Star Trek) and after having seen Cloverfield (hence the name Cloverball).
But this was all in 2008 (at least that's what the time stamp said on the last file when I opened it), and I can't really remember all the details. I just knew that I wanted to have a fight between two balls, taking place in a city.
This is as far as I got in 2008:

It was a week-end blocking out affair and got reopened last Tuesday, for another 3 day stint. So all in all 5 days, following roughly the main idea outline. As I continued last week, I knew that the red balls should assemble another guy with two legs, and that they would then walk/run towards each other and fight Godzilla style, with the red guy pushing the blue guy into a building as an ending.
That ending felt too open though and I wanted a better ending shot. First I thought about the red guy running/jumping into the blue guy and ending with a wide shot of a big mushroom explosion/cloud shot, but eventually settled on the current last shot.
The blue guy firing lasers and the red guy jumping away plus firing up his defense shield ideas grew pretty much in a straight-ahead fashion. Since I set myself a deadline (Thursday night, so that I could present it on Friday for a talk at the AAU), I didn't sit down to thumbnail or storyboard everything out. But I was really excited about finishing this whole thing, so tons of idea just popped up and I ran with what I liked the most.

The rig that I used was from Mutiny Studios, which you can download here.

The render was a standard software render using the DOF Control script for the depth of field.

Cheers
JD

Body movement in support of personality

Each animator will get to a point where they will have mastered the body mechanics enough so that they can focus on acting choices. But temptation is always there to have gestures or other body movements showcasing animation principles instead of personality. I totally understand and I'm guilty of that myself. A frequent example in my workshops is my Maya 3 assignment from the Academy, Ze Chair:


which was lovingly referred to as "Animation Jerk Off" by the awesome teacher Lisa Mullins. She immediately let me know that this is just animation for animation's sake. And she was totally right. I was more in love with the animation principles and focused on showing them off, instead of thinking about character and personality. I hope she's still teaching. Her class was the first real character animation class for me and one of the best ones.

So once you get passed that, it's less about "there's a pop on x17" but more about acting choices, which fall more into the "I prefer this over that." as opposed to being wrong (of course you can have totally inappropriate acting choices that will feel wrong, but I hope you get my point).

Which brings me to a workshop clip I was giving feedback for. The question from the animator was, which version I preferred. My response and preference was based on movement supporting a character's personality, which I'm sure is totally debatable, but I just wanted post the feedback from the Workshop Feedback page here as well:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

stuck02


IP10

(This is in response to which version I prefer.)

Funny enough, I like them both, but specific parts and would mix them. I know that sounds complicated and not sure if that's helping you. What I like about "stuck02" is the amount of rotation and overlap the body has after she's being stuck. In "stuck02" she goes pretty far down up to x54, whereas in "IP10" she doesn't go as far and stops a bit abruptly. So anim wise from a body mechanics point of view, "stuck02" feels better.

But what I prefer in "IP10" is her left arm from x51 to 74, because it's stiffer. She's surprised, a bit irritated, but tense, and that is reflected in that stiffer arm. In "stuck02", from x54 to 85, the arm is loose and dangling, and feels too out of control and animated. Too me it's not in character.
After that it's up to you. Neither versions are wrong, they are just different in terms of acting choices. In "stuck02" she looks back up to x100 in a slow way, which gives her a feel of "Hello? Uhm... anybody see that? Help me!". In "IP10" she goes up very fast to x93, which gives it a feel of "Oops! I hope no one saw that!", which is a bit more in character because she looks and moves like a confident business woman, so when she's in trouble, I think she would want to keep that strong and confident look, so she wouldn't look around for help, she would try to fix it herself. That strong personality is reflected in x182, how she puts her glasses back into the right place. Then at the end when the manhole cover comes out, that's what breaks her confidence and that's why she looks surprised and out of it at x240. It's good contrast and a change in her character, whereas in "stuck02", she already looks a bit helpless like that during the x91 area. So the ending in "stuck02" is a bit more of the same in terms of character and less of a contrast.

So basically, I would use "stuck02" until x56, then use the rest of "IP10". :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Origin of Acting Choices

One thing I always mention in my workshops in terms of acting choices is how the environment can and should influence the acting choices of your character.

The main example, which I ripped off of "Inside the Actor's Studio" (but don't remember who said it first), is:

- imagine a scenario where a character enters a room/place and gets ready to go to sleep.
- the steps involved in doing so could be: entering room, turning lights on, putting keys or other belongings somewhere, brushing teeth, undressing, going to bed

Now. Those acting choices and whatever the character is doing in order to go through those steps will be different depending on where the character is.

If the character (a man for instance) is at his own place he will be familiar with his surroundings, so when he enters his house/apartment/whatever and switches on the light, he won't have to look and search for the switch, he probably won't even look in the direction of the switch while he flips it, because it's a habit. All the bathroom interaction, etc. etc. will be based on familiarity and routine.

But. If the guy is staying at a hotel (first time there), the same steps (entering, lights, keys, etc.) will have different acting choices because he is not familiar with the place. He will have to look for the switch, for other rooms, etc. etc.

So the same action will be different depending on the environment and the character's relationship to that environment.

Why do I bring this up now? I was reading an interview about John C. Reilly and his new movie "Carnage" at hollywoodreporter.com and one of the questions was "What did you learn about filmmaking from Roman?" (Roman Polanski is the director)

I found his answer very interesting and it reminded me of that Inside the Actor's Studio thing.

During rehearsals, I'd have this book in my hand, and I have to set this book down in order to do the next bit of acting, and he would say: "Why would you put the book down? You don't know that you're going to pick up the bottle yet. You're doing that because you know you need your hands free, but that doesn't make sense."

Totally true and a good reminder to question the origin of your acting choices!

Posts translated into Italian

Eleonora Tiberi has a great site in Italian called animatorspot.com and on it you will find posts from Spungella or Academyanimation translated into Italian!

The first one is "The Keys to Getting a Job by Pamela K. Thompson" and more are to follow. I will update posts and notify readers here.

Thanks Eleonora for doing that!

So head over there for the translated post!

Weight assignment - exercise or reel shot?

With the beginning of the workshops there are questions trickling in regarding shots and one of them was regarding a weight exercise and I thought I'd post the answer here.

"You can do a straight forward weight exercise, sure! If you want it reel wise, I would place the weight action among an overall action. So it's not just a guy in an empty room lifting a box, but maybe it's kitchen guy and it's rush hour, you just see frantic arms from a window that wave, signaling that they are waiting for the dish and he has to hurry. And the guy is trying to lift and bring over a huge plate with a pig head on it (and apple in its mouth). Maybe half way through another kitchen guy runs through the kitchen cutting him off so he has to stop, do a 360 and then continues.

Something like that. :)

Just think about movies you've seen (real and animated) where a character is lifting, pulling, pushing, throwing or doing something involving weight. You wouldn't think immediately that this is a weight assignment because it's part of a story and maybe buried as a secondary action within an overall goal of the shot.

The reason why I would go beyond just a simple exercise set up (unmodified character and set) is because it forces you think about the character and what he did before and what he's going to do. You're placing the character within an environment and that forces him (and in return you) to think about that space and that will influence his behavioral choices (and your acting choices). Add conflict to the situation and that will influence his choices as well. All those choices show us what type of character he/she/it is and ultimately that is the goal of your animation, to go beyond the physical motion and to add character.

And that to me is a good thing to show on a reel, since ultimately, when you're working on a production, you will have to think about all those things and concentrate on the character and the acting choices. I think it shows potential employers that you are thinking beyond the exercise and beyond the simpler act of moving things around.

And to me, this type of shot is also more fun and it shows in your shot when you have fun or if you're bored with an exercise."

Cheers
JD

Facial Animation and Default Poses

the woman and the guy behind Tribble are default-y as well. :)

This is something I mentioned just recently in the workshop:

When there is silence or a pause between sentences (or whatever the audio is) for your character, you don't have to put the facial features back to their default position. It's okay to keep the mouth open, it doesn't have to close every time the character is not saying anything.

And if you want a real life reference clip for the weirdness of going back to default, check out the clip on Gizmodo of Al Franken questioning Guy L. "Bud" Tribble (that guy must be a Star Trek fan!). Watch how Mr. Tribble drifts into a weird default face at 2:28, which is at the very, but for the full effect, start it at 1:21. :)

End of Day Deadlines

Something important to consider when you start out:

Double check what "end of day" really means in terms of deadlines. Not keeping your deadline can have consequences for many people around you.

Sometimes you hear end of day and it's open in terms of the specific time, since production will show it to the client/director the next day. If you're allowed to stay late then you work until it's done. That's what I would call a soft deadline.

But there are also hard deadlines, where the cut off time could be 6pm for instance. This means everything has to be really done by the end of the day, so that production can prep the shots for a transmission with the client the next day, where shots get sent to editors, etc. There's no wiggle room, so if you don't have anything ready by 6, production won't be able to show anything and that puts them behind schedule.

There's another aspect to consider though. Let's say a supervisor asks his lead if a shot can be ready by 6pm. The lead will check with the animator on his team about that shot and the animator says he'll have it by then.
What if the animator thought that 6pm = end of day, so he/she can stay late and didn't double check about the deadline? 6pm rolls by and the shot is not ready, which is not good for the animator, but on top that it's also not good for the lead, since he assured the supe that the shot will be ready.

Be aware of the consequences if you don't keep your deadlines. It's a team effort, so be mindful of the people around you and their responsibilities.

And yes, the lead could double check as well but don't wait for other people to help you, be pro-active.

Cheers
JD

How do you balance work and family life?

This was a question I got asked during an Animation Mentor Q&A I did last year, and which I get asked from students/workshop people and via email quite a bit. But it seems like that question has been coming up more often lately so I thought I'd expand on my Q&A response and outline my daily and constantly evolving workflow.

My initial response to "How do you balance work and family life?" was:

You balance it with a lot of care, sacrifice and reshuffling of priorities. :)

My main priorities are as follows:

1. Family - it's very important to me to spend as much time as I can with my wife and son, especially my son. He grows up fast and before you know he's off to college or somewhere else, all grown up.

2. Primary Work - I say primary because the FX house I work at is my primary work, which allows me to pay my bills. I'm the breadwinner at the moment so I need to make sure that I don't jeopardize my position there. Being Swiss, I'm very anal and time conscious. :) So the moment my required hours at work are up I'm off home to spend time with my family. But I'm also a huge fanboy and love my work and I've been treated very well there, so I'm also a company man and try to help out as much as I can in terms of Overtime Work and additional duties. You can't be a slacker or do less than is expected of you. We do 9 hours a day on a normal day, so that's where I'm going to put 200% of effort into it. If a show is in crunch mode and you're being asked to stay late or come in on a week-end, I'm there.

That's the biggest balancing act and every now and then you reshuffle things. Let's say my son is off to camp, I'll spend a bit more time at work if it's needed, so #2 becomes #1 and so on, while making sure that I don't neglect my time with my wife.

3. Secondary Work - That would be AM, my workshops or other teaching activities. Whatever time is left I spend here. And again, if #1 and/or #2 change in terms of demand, then #3 gets bumped to the top.

I love doing animation work, so it's a constant fight over what priority gets the number 1 spot. :) But you can't have everything, so that's where the sacrifices come in (or compromises). I wish I could eat pizza all day and watch movies, but that's just not going to happen (too often...).

But as whole: family first and respect your work. I like to be productive but without certain tools I use it'd have a much harder time.

Now, what are the tools or methods I use in order to get stuff done? My current helpers are:

iPhone/iPad:

I love gadgets and those two are huge time savers for me. My iPhone is always on me and it helps me organize meetings, schedules, appointments, etc. in a very quick and efficient way. I can take notes whenever I need to (say you have a new animation idea or want to write down some acting references you observed), I can shoot reference or take pictures whenever it is needed, scribble down sketches, expand my reference library etc. Plus I can respond to emails whenever I have the time and I do respond to every email that I get (workshop people get priority treatment, so if I haven't responded to you yet, I will! :) ).
Perks on top of that are the various apps you get on it, games, Netflix, Hulu, web browsing, and the list goes on. I get a lot of stuff done thanks to it and once I get home I pick up my iPad for the same reasons. The only time I use a PC is for heavier work like animation in Maya or any After Effects work, plus most of the online workshop critiquing (although I just got an app that lets you frame through video clips, so now I can do even more work on the road!).

The downside is that you're always "on", but I found that a minute here and there responding to emails and doing other work throughout the day is much better than doing nothing and getting to it in the evening or even worse at the end of the week. By then there's a huge pile of stuff to go through and I'd like to relax in the evenings and on week-ends.

Echofone/Twitter:


Ah Twitter. How annoying it can be. I have to admit, I used to hate it. The name, the idea behind it, tweets like "I'm taking a shower." Really? It felt so self centered. I remember ranting about it to my students for an hour during my last class at the AAU. When they asked how they could stay up to date with the stuff that I was talking about in class, someone suggested I should just join Twitter and the students could follow me that way. It cracked me up and I reluctantly joined. And oh boy was I wrong. Well, it's still annoying, but it totally changed my browsing habits. Enter Echofon. I used to have bookmarks in my browser and I would check certain sites on a regular basis to see what's new or use RSS feeds. But with Echofon active in Firefox I just have little pop-ups that show me short headlines from the sites that I follow. It's very concentrated and streamlined and my web browsing time went down dramatically. Which is of course very good when you're at work. :)
Obviously work comes first, but every now and then there is a new trailer that's online or other news that you want to read and with Echofon I can do just that and save time.
Once you have a post popping up that interests you, the Firefox tabs enter the game.

Firefox/Tabs:


You should see my browsers at home and at work. I have so many tabs open, some of them are months old. Why? Well, again, work comes first. So, once there is something that interests me, I'll open it in a tab and whenever time permits, I'll get to it. And it's not always work work work. There are shots that take a long time to render, files that need to get transferred to the TDs down the pipeline, etc. etc. so whenever something like that comes up, I can catch up with the stuff I want to read/watch/listen to. If it's something longer, like a making-of or a whole site by a super cool artist, then I'll resort to Spungella and Swench and I'll post it there so I can read it at home at a later point.

Spungella/Swench:


And here's the shocker! A lot of the stuff on Spungella that I post, I haven't looked at. Dun dun duuuuuh.... (And this goes for all of Swench. It's my online bookmark corner that I can access whenever and where ever). But I know that I will later because it's stuff that interests me. There's no way I would be able to read through and watch everything that I post beforehand. I wouldn't get to my work and I'd be fired within a week. So once again, time management and priorities. With Echofon and Blogger, finding something and posting it doesn't take longer than 30secs, sometimes even less and that's usually all done during a render.
But yes, I still have tabs open that are really old because I read little sections at a time or check updates. :)
For instance, this article mentions a few good episodes that I wanted to watch at one point, or this is about the Black Cauldron. Sure I could post it and read later, but for some reason I'm keeping those and many other tabs open. Hahahaha!

So there you have it. Nerdy secrets revealed. :)

It helps of course that I love animation and that I love talking/teaching about animation and that I have a very patient family. Believe it or not, it's really not that crazy once you found a good way of managing the duties and getting your work done. But don't forget to relax. As much as I like to be productive, I also love being lazy. Give yourself time to unplug and to just do nothing.

I hope that answered some questions and as always, leave a comment or email me if you have more questions.

Cheers
JD

Workflow questions

Every now and then I get workflow questions via email since I never finished my initial post (I do have more material for that post but I never finished the whole thing; I should just add what I have...).
After those years though I can say that I don't have one specific workflow. Each shot demands a different approach or a combination of different methods.
Either way, I thought I'd might as well post the questions and answers, in case other people are interested:​

> * do you use non-weighted or weighted tangents?

non-weighted

> * After you block in linear what type of splines do you convert to?

The keys are set to linear by default but I switch to splines immediately depending on the movement. If there's an arm swing, no need to keep it on linear, I'll select the keys in the timeliner, do a right click and switch the keys to spline.

> * Do you key the whole character in breakdown poses to adjust the timing?

Yep, I key all the major controllers (except face and fingers) for the initial blocking, so it's very much pose to pose with breakdowns. Then I can move those keys in the timeliner to adjust the timing until I'm happy with it. After that I go in and set more keys per controller where needed.

> * When do you offset things in the graph editor?

I offset the poses in the blocking already (most of the time). I don't work in the graph editor that much anymore. It's easier for me to adjust the poses and timing looking through the render camera. I only check curves in the graph editor to make sure that there are no funky spikes and stuff like that.

> if you will be able to finish the shot on the workflow page. it would be great to see a screenshot of the dope editor and the graph editor of one specific controller. I'd like to see how organized it is. some students seem to like blocking in stepped, then converting it to splines using the AutoTangent+ Non weighted combination.

Yeah, all in linear, I've never used stepped, only because I like to see whole thing timed out a soon as I can. If you don't set enough breakdowns during the stepped blocking and then go to splines, a lot of people freak out because the timing changes.


If anybody have more questions, let me know via comments or shoot me an email.


Cheers
JD

How do you take criticism of your work in a professional environment?

Head over to AM's animationtipsandtricks.com to read the latest post , by yours truly:

How do you take criticism of your work in a professional environment?

Kenny Roy's Workflow Lecture

Kenny Roy just released his latest lecture and I'm just that it is as good as the previous ones. Students and workshop takers often ask about workflow, so this latest 100 minute lecture should be of great value. To stay up to date, you can also follow Kenny Roy's Twitter.

Is Mocap Animation?

I know, the age old question, but I do get emails about it and I know I rant about it a lot, but might as well post my answer here as well. Feel free to argue, flame and curse, but as someone who's used mocap before, here' s my take (and email response):


Manipulation of images on a frame by frame basis. Isn't that the rule
set forth by the Academy?

Isn't a regular film animation as well then? They do color timing and
lots of other stuff on a frame by frame basis, which is the definition
of animation, no? Manipulation of images on a frame by frame basis? I
know, I'm really stretching it here...

Animation gets created from scratch, film is being recorded and
manipulated afterwards.

That, to me, is a big personal distinction. And the moment you add
something to the mix that is based on a real time recording, it messes
up the clear distinction of work being animation.

Looking at the whole process of using mocap, then my take is yes, it's
animation. It's just a tool. Each tool gives the artist a certain amount
of freedom. Although mocap gives you none. Mocap is very hard on
animator's egos (including mine) because their creative choices are
ignored since someone else is doing the work for them. The animators are
just here to clean up the data. But once you get the data, people have
to clean it up and even after that, animators tweak the data in order to
get the right performance out of it and often times chunks are being
deleted completely and replaced by keyframe work. So there is
manipulation on a frame by frame basis. Hence for me, animation.

The big problem that people have is that the acting choices are being
recorded in real time. Since it's real time, it's not animation. True,
but people are only focusing on one section of using mocap. When you
shoot reference and use it, you are also basing your animation on that
footage that a camera recorded in real time. But instead of a computer
and a mocap wrangler taking that data and making it useful for the
animation, it's the animator themselves that have to take (or choose and
take) what frame and pose is good and then they put that onto their
character. So instead of an automated process by a computer and then
manual process by a data person, the artist does it all. It's just a
different way of using the recorded footage on your rig. Yet when an
animator does it all, it's called animation. That's just people's egos
being hurt and people being hypocrites, don't you think?
It's also based on people who haven't used mocap and don't understand
the process. They think that a camera records it all and then voila, via
magic, it's in the movie and no one did anything to it. If it were that
case, then I wouldn't call it animation either. But no mocap goes
untouched. But then the movie is being announced as a mocap movie and
people cry foul, "It's not animation!".

[Added: And that's where most of my pissy attitude comes from, to dismiss a movie like Avatar as being "just" a mocap movie with no animation. The creatures were not mocapped, a lot of the action scenes were keyframed, but that gets lost amidst all the mocap hate... No, the mocap recording process is not animation, just like shooting reference isn't, but the end result often times is, due to the manual work involved to fix it or the fact that it gets redone from scratch by hand. Imagine someone shoots reference, then does rough blocking, then you get the shot and fix some parts, do others from scratch and polish the rest. Does that mean you're not an animator doing animation because you didn't do everything?]

Personally, I couldn't care less [about the process]. Whatever it takes to get the shot done
for your client/director/whoever. It's the end result that matters, not
the tool. Should I refuse to use the mocap data at work because they are
not using my brilliant acting choices? Good luck explaining that to the
client who wants the acting choices of his actors. Or when you have a
scene with 50 characters in it. Do you want to keyframe 50 characters?
Mocap will be much faster. Mocap can look very mocap-y, but it will feel
more real than keyframe animation and if the project is based on a
photoreal look, then it will be more convincing and better for the
project. Again, it's not exactly fulfilling on a creative level, but I
think being a professional animator is more than just creating animation
by hand from scratch. It's about bringing someone else's vision to the
screen. That's what you're hired to do. So use what is at your disposal
in order to get the job done, regardless of what your preference is.

Animators always complain that there shouldn't be a distinction between
2D and 3D, that it's just a tool, it's the story that matters. Well,
once mocap comes into play, people forget that very quickly, no?

If I had a choice for my own personal work, I wouldn't use mocap. Why?
Because there's no creativity on your part. You are just a tool, you're
not given the option to create the performance (which is in my opinion
the main reason why people are opposed to it, if they're honest with
themselves). It's just too much fun to come up with your own animation
and acting choices.

So yes, if you look at the whole process of mocap, from the beginning,
the fixing and tweaking and reworking to the end result, then yes, there
is enough manual work behind it that makes it animation.
If you just look at the process of recording the mocap artists, then no.
Just like filming yourself acting things out is not animation. And if
you look at possible future ways where the mocap actors are being
recorded and the data is being put onto the rig and rendered and it
looks finished, then no, because no one has manipulated and tweaked and
changed it.

Ah... ranting...

AM Tips and Tricks: Cleaning up curves

Yours truly has a new post up courtesy of Animation Mentor (thanks!). This time the question was:

How Do You Deal With Curves in Character Animation? Should I Be Cleaning Up Curves and Deleting Unnecessary Keys?

So if you have a second and are interested, head over there!

Body Language - Jobs vs. Schmidt

I'm a total nerd and I love gadgets. So I'm an avid reader of Gizmodo.com. Today a picture was featured that showed Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt talking to each other. The press is reporting a feud between Apple and Google, so everybody is all over this picture. Me too, but more from a pose point of view. When I first saw it I thought Schmidt's pose is very submissive. It's like a school boy who's in trouble and who's sitting in front of the principle. :)

Gizmodo has an analysis by Janine Driver who's a body linguistic expert, in case you want to know more and see more comparison images.Here's the main the pic that started it all: