Arthur Christmas has opened in theaters and so far it’s getting some nice reviews! It was a fun movie to work on and am proud to have been a part of it. I’ve had the chance to see the film twice already and can say it’s a fun one for the whole family. Definitely check it out if you have a chance!

Making of the Smurfs

Here’s a great little video on how the Smurfs were made. They were definitely fun characters to animate!

The new trailer for Arthur Christmas was just released. Hit’s the theaters on November 23rd. Definitely going to be a good one for the whole family. Enjoy!

I’m still alive…

What a busy year this has turned out to be! After animating on Yogi Bear at the end of last year, I started over at Sony Pictures Imageworks in Culver City to work on The Smurfs movie. I had a great time working on The Smurfs and now I’m animating on the next Aardman/Sony Animation project, Arthur Christmas. You can check out the trailers for both films below if you haven’t already seen them. Enjoy!

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Here’s a quick collection of the shots I animated for Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. It was a fun project to work on and I’m really thankful for the experience. If you still haven’t seen the film yet, it’s now conveniently available on DVD & Blu-Ray!

Today is the release of Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. I worked many months on this film so it’s really great to see it finally hit the big screen! A few weeks back I got to attend a special advanced screening at Fox Studios and I can say the film is pretty darn hilarious. If you like the Chipmunks or you have kids that do then definitely go see it.

I just discovered some great videos on You Tube where BAFTA interviews editor Pietro Scalia. Many directors including Oliver Stone, Gus Van Sant, and Ridley Scott have all worked with him. The videos offer some wonderful insight into his editing process for films such as Good Will Hunting, JFK, and Gladiator among others. I’ve posted one of the videos below along with links to the rest. Enjoy!

The Editing of Gladiator

The Editing of JFK

The Editing of Black Hawk Down

Working with Directors

I got a fabulous new book in the mail this week. It’s the latest in the Walt Disney Animation Studios: The Archive Series and it’s called, Animation. This is the second book in the series and it’s every bit as impressive as the first (the first book came out last year and is titled, Story).

The book is a beautiful hard-bound edition and it features the original animation pencil drawings of Disney greats; Ub Iwerks, Grim Natwick, Art Babbitt, Fred Moore, Bill Tytla, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, and Eric Goldberg just to name a few! There are tons of drawings here from Steamboat Willie through Disney’s latest, The Princess and the Frog. As you can imagine, the drawings are amazing to look at and many also feature the original timing charts.

While working at Rhythm & Hues I was treated to many Disney animation originals that happened to be hung along the walls. Some days I would literally get stuck in the hall, completely mesmerized by a drawing before finally making it back to my desk. It’s truly a gift to be able to see these up close and now with this book you can.

I highly recommend picking up a copy!

Recently, I attended the first annual CTN Animation Expo that took place in Burbank. To put it simply; the show was unbelievable! Congratulations are definitely in order to the organizers because this was one truly amazing event.

Tony Bancroft doing a drawing demo.

For those who weren’t able to attend, the Expo gathered together some of the animation industry’s greatest talents under one roof. In addition to the exhibit floor (which featured 100 exhibitors), the expo also featured panels and workshops, multiple recruiting opportunities, and regular film screenings over the course of the 3 day event. I attended all 3 days, and while I wasn’t able to attend everything, I sure tried! Yes, it was that good.

Andreas Deja doing a drawing demo and discussing animation.

For me this was one of those rare events that got me super excited about animation and all its potential as an art form. I walked away feeling completely inspired and enthusiastic; not only for my own future as an animator, but for the future of animation. If you weren’t able to attend this year, I highly recommend attending next year if at all possible!

Eric Goldberg and me.

Below is a summary of some of the presentation highlights I experienced. Enjoy!

The Power of Mime: Character Movement for Animation
Taught by Lorin Eric Salm

A wonderful presentation on how characters express themselves with the body using the principles of mime. Lorin is a great instructor with over 25 years experience and a former student of Marcel Marceau. He’s taught at Disney, Dreamworks, Sony, and Rhythm & Hues. While the presentation time was limited, I definitely could see a glimpse of how helpful an understanding of mime can be for an animator. In essence, animators and mime’s share a lot of the same sort of responsibility to an audience. We have to create something from nothing (the illusion of life); for instance, the way a mime might create the illusion of an invisible box that is extremely heavy (shown by the way the box affects the characters physical posture and movement) is very similar to the way an animator might describe it in drawings. One great thing about learning mime is it gets you up out of your chair and acting things out physically (and feeling it in your body). Lorin offers a “Character Movement for Animation” workshop for both animation studios and schools and is definitely worth checking out if you’re interested. Visit http://www.movement-coach.com/animation for more information.

Crafting the Pitch
Taught by Pilar Alessandra

A presentation on how to craft the perfect pitch. Pilar Alessandra is a script consultant with many years experience and she’s developed a great method for streamlining the writing process. Through asking questions and using her “Minute Pitch” worksheet, everyone walked away some great new tools for presenting a solid pitch of their stories. If you’re interested in learning more visit OnThePage.tv for more information. In addition to teaching classes, Pilar has a DVD (which I happened to win!) and a great podcast called “On the Page” which you can find on iTunes.

Steering Your Career Over All Terrains from Feature Studio to Freelance
Lisa Kay – Founder of Greenlight Jobs
Kim Mackey – Recruiter at Dreamworks Animation
Josilin Torrano – Recruiter at Nickelodeon
Debra Blanchard – Traditional/CG Recruiter at Fringe Talent

This was an extremely informative presentation on the state of the industry and how to navigate through it. Some positive figures that were presented (sorry, I didn’t jot down what the source of these were):

• Increase in animation jobs by 20% since the beginning of 2009
• Global growth in animation jobs is $35 billion (up from $25 billion originally projected in 2010)
• Largest concentration of animation companies are in USA followed by India, UK, France and Germany

Here are some helpful hints to what recruiters are looking for:

• Flexibility & Enthusiasm (personality!).
• Best work first.
• Be Prepared (do your homework; research the studio and what they’re looking for).
• Timing (being prepared when the studio has a need).
• Use networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Technical skills are becoming more important in CG animation.
• The more diverse the portfolio the better (feature multiple styles).
• Don’t wait for a job posting. Apply anyways!
• If it’s possible, do check in with recruiters but be reasonable about it (do your homework).
• The main things feature studios want to see are performance, lipsync, and body mechanics.

The 5 Successful Traits of an Animator
Andrew Gordon – Pixar

This was hands-down my favorite presentation. No fluff here at all, just solid nuts and bolts of what Andrew believes are the traits of a successful animator. These included things like your attitude as an animator, your acting choices, and having an understanding of caricature. There were a couple of others I didn’t have time to  jot down because it was a pretty quick presentation. But it was still awesome and when time ran out, Andrew graciously continued outside on his laptop. I really walked away from this one completely inspired and wanting to find ways to incorporate what he said into my own work. Andrew had mentioned he was going to post some stuff from his presentation online. Definitely check SplineDoctors.com for more information on that and a Master Animation class that Andrew teaches from time to time.

UPDATE: Andrew has now posted the 5 Successful Traits of an Animator on his blog at http://splinedoctors.com/2009/12/successful-traits-of-an-animator.

Animation Mentor’s Animation Career Snapshot
Eric Goldberg – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Sean Sexton – Dreamworks Animation
Chris Williams – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Kira Lehtomaki – Walt Disney Animation Studios

An inspiring presentation of some of the top animators from various studios. They discussed the day to day workings of their jobs as well as how they got there. Eric Goldberg was a joy to listen to as always. It was also great to hear fellow Animation Mentor grad Kira Lehtomaki discuss her journey from being a student to becoming an animator at Disney. Like some of the other popular panels, this one was packed! I feel lucky to have gotten a seat.

From Thumbnail to Finished Animation
Jason Ryan – Dreamworks, Disney

Jason Ryan working it out in Flipbook.

A great presentation on planning your animation in Digicel Flipbook and finishing it in Maya. I always thoroughly enjoy watching Jason work out his animation in Flipbook because you can see his decision making process as he’s doing it. Jason is also one of the nicest guys around and was really great about elaborating more on his process after the presentation. Here are some quick notes I jotted down:

• Jason spends about 40-60 minutes working on a Flipbook pass
• He deals with spacing first (poses and how they relate to each other). Timing second. So, he does consecutive drawings on each frame, works out the spacing, then drags the drawings in time to get the timing. In a dialogue shot, Jason would put those drawings on the specific dialogue beats first.
• Jason doesn’t use Flipbook on every shot. Only on shots where the action is not clear.
• Don’t get possessive over anything. Rough it out fast.
• Sometimes Jason starts with a cliché just to get something working. But, then he asks “how can I make it not cliché and unique” and then pushes it past the cliché aspect.
• Moving holds = Windows of time. He narrows the windows of time with smaller actions like breathing, transition out of previous action, anticipate into next action, etc.

A lot of what Jason covered is similar to what he discusses in his monthly webinar which I participate in. You can check it out at http://www.jrawebinar.com for more information.

The Relevance of Anatomy in Animation
Dr. Stuart S. Sumida

Another great presentation on how anatomy affects animation. It was fascinating to see how different aspects affect how a character or creature is made up and how it is designed to move. For example, whether an animal is a carnivore or a herbivore totally affects how the anatomy is constructed and how that animal moves. For creatures that don’t exist in the real world, you can probably build them from something that you already know. For example, the beast from “Beauty and the Beast” is part human, part buffalo, etc. Grounding the beast in realistic animals gives him more believability. Again, this presentation needed more time than was allowed, but there are some resources from the presentation available online. Go to StuartSumida.com for more information.

Well, those were some of the main highlights for me. I know it’s a long post, but this is really only a small sampling of all the cool stuff that was going on during the show. In fact, I just saw that Cartoon Brew posted about Jeremy Hopkins blog, XSheet.net. He’s uploaded some nice videos of Don Bluth and Eric Goldberg from the show and apparently more are on the way. Definitely check them out!