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!

Geez, it’s been a little while since I last posted but I’m back! Here’s a walk cycle I was playing around with that I thought I’d share.

One thing I’ve heard from some very experienced animators is to actually animate what you see in the animation books (rather than just reading it). It’s definitely a great way to really understand what’s being explained and gives you a more intimate sense of how that particular animator might approach something. So, after having perused several chapters of Eric Goldberg’s Character Animation Crash Course at various times, I decided to read it from start to finish. It’s a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. I really liked Eric Goldberg’s approach to attitude walks (is there really any other kind?) so I decided to animate the example from the book. Well, it’s not really an exact copy but I took the main idea and then embellished from there. I always remember how hard it is to do a good walk with so many principles happening simultaneously. But, that’s what I came up with. Feel free to leave feedback if you like. More posts to follow!

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.

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!

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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Until next time! 

So things are trucking along at Rhythm & Hues. After 2 weeks of training I’m already knee-deep into my first shots. I’m really enjoying the experience so far and it’s every bit as challenging as I had imagined. I feel like I’m swimming in the deep end, but that’s a good thing. There are so many talented people working here and that really pushes me to try and put up my best work possible. It feels like a big jump going from games to film (maybe I can even blog about this later on). But, I think the last several years of working in games and especially the training I received at Animation Mentor helped prepare me for working on features. I still have a long ways to go, but I’m looking forward to seeing how this journey plays out!

The winners of the Spline Doctors challenge have been posted. First Place went to Chris O’Hara, Second Place went to Daniel Huertas, and Third Place (as well as my favorite entry) went to my old Animation Mentor classmate Brandon Beckstead. Congrats you guys!

The contest was a really great idea and I hope they do more stuff like this in the future so I can participate! In the end, I only had time to submit my pencil test (which they graciously included on the compilation video) because I’ve been super busy with relocating to Los Angeles. But, I should be settled soon and back in action!

So I decided I’d give the Spline Doctors animation challenge a go. I know I still have some work to put the final polish on my “Gettin’ Out” test but this sounded like a fun opportunity (and I intend to finish Gettin’ Out right after that). I came into this late so it will be tough trying to make the April 1st deadline. But, either way it should make for a fun test and a chance to learn something new.

I decided to do something a little different. Instead of having a character doing a performance to Christian Bale’s rant, I thought it might be interesting to focus on the person getting yelled at. In reality it was the Director of Photography, but for my test I decided to make the guy a grip.

This is just a simple (and very rough) pencil test done in Flash…I actually prefer to use Flipbook but my version only holds 300 frames and this clip came in at almost 20 seconds. So even though the drawings are nothing to write home about, I think it at least gives me a good idea of what I want the test to be. See what you think…feedback is always welcome.

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