Guest Lecture Notes and Various other things

Tonight was an awesome lecture! Darren Holmes came and lectured about being an Editor for both live-action films and animated ones. Not a whole lot of notes, he used a lot of visuals to illustrate his points. Overall, it came down to:

The editor is the voice of the storyteller, they convey the inflection, pacing, and diction of the film. As an editor you have to consider the different aspects of a sequence not just for yourself, but how an audience might respond to it.
There are two reasons to make a cut: Either for an emotional reason or for keeping the tempo consistent(rhythm or action as he used it).
The first and last 5 minutes of a film are your only two chances to grab your audience. If you don't grab an audiences attention in the beginning, they're lost for the rest of the film. Those last 5 minutes are what everyone will remember. He showed us an example for a grabbing opening, by playing Silverado.
Otherwise, he ended by saying, "Hollywood is a small town--animation is even smaller. As one animator at Disney put it, 'It's like high school, but with really expensive cars.' Don't burn bridges. The business is like the special forces because you'll be called upon different projects because of your specific talent. Be willing to start at the bottom(particularly when thinking of becoming an editor), When you have spare time--work toward what you want."

He showed a whole treasure trove of animatics and film clips to illustrate his lecture. These included a lot of rough animatics from Ratatouille(a couple are on the DVD featurette), Iron Giant, and Lilo & Stitch. All of them were extremely inspiring since I'm currently in the animatic stage and seeing the first passes on Iron Giant and then seeing the finished version was, to say the least, amazing. He went into detail as to how Brad Bird works(both on Iron Giant and on Ratatouille) and after each animatic played he would break it down and point out the changes that were later made for the final version. He also played a trailer Brad Bird made to try and promote Iron Giant when it was about to be released....if they had used THAT trailer, Iron Giant would have done much better in theatres...it was dramatic and comedic at the same time. Anyways, I'm very eager to get back to work on my animatic and really push my dramatic moments and help establish more contrast between the "calm" scenes and the climatic/dramatic ones.

As far as film updates: I finished re-boarding my film yesterday and spent the greater part of today compiling them in Final Cut, it's clocking in just shy of 90 seconds which is perfect! Just need to add more contrast and music. Then I'll be ready to share it again with teachers and friends. Here's a quick preview of one of my boards for my film:

Board 5 of 83. This one showcases my second character, Ollie who is Pilot's owner.

P.S. It's December tomorrow! When did that happen, November shot by. So much to do in the just a matter of days! 13 days and I'll be on a plane right now(night flight for me), it's just crazy how fast time has gone by and how much I've learned. Can't wait to see how next semester goes, by the time May rolls around I'll actually have a film in my hands!

Little Kid Poses

For traditional animation, had to design ourselves as kids(between 6-8 years old). This weekend is all about animating-both 2D and 3D. Very excited to get started.

Also this Friday another guest lecture has been announced: Darren Holmes is coming. According to IMDB he has been the editor on films like Iron Giant, Ratatouille, Lion King, Lilo & Stitch, etc. Should be very interesting.

Thanksgiving Break Report

Had a fantastic time---definately great being back home, even if it was short. After arriving at the airport I stopped by my Mom's work and said hello to everyone. Then went back home for a bit to drop off luggage and of course to see if Annie remembered me. Around 3 I hopped in my car and drove over to visit with friends before coming back home to a delicious home-cooked meal! That night we watched Ratatouille since my Step-dad hadn't seen it yet. Even after seeing this film several times now, I still really enjoy it. Had Thanksgiving at our house, which was nice and relaxing. Next day was spent entirely at home, completely away from Black Friday madness(haha), and opted for storyboarding my homework assignment(65 panels! Not for my film), later my parents and I decided to watch Monster's Inc. Saturday was spent hanging out with friends and drawing at the mall(fantastic place to go for studying movement for my kid animation) and then we went and saw Enchanted. I enjoyed seeing 2D animation back on the big screen, overall it was a pretty good movie. Came home and worked on my film storyboards before watching Raising Arizona(recommended by Pixar people, and I now can see why). Packed up my stuff afterwards and at the bright and early time of 7 am I was flying over Southern Oregon. Safely landed at LAX around 9 am and reached CalArts/my cube about 10am where I've since been working on a couple leftover homework assignments. But I just have my animation homework and film left so I'm chillin' the rest of the night. Well, it was great seeing everyone again and I'll be back in town before you Oregon people know it!(18 days to be exact, haha...make that 18 crazy busy days.) Anyways, good to be back in my cube and of course a thank you to my CalArts buds for the warm welcome and airport pick-up. It was of course great seeing the CalArtians again. Everyone is starting to trickle in from their own vacations and tomorrow CalArts will return to its' old self. So anyways, here's how I spent part of my morning:

Finishing this perspective piece that I started before break:

Here's the colored version I did this morning and I'm turning in tomorrow:

Poor squirrel can't catch a break when it comes to hiding his acorn!

Early Thanksgiving Post

So because I can't fall asleep, how about another post?

In celebration of Thanksgiving here's some artwork featuring the increasingly popular creation---THE TURDUCKEN!



Just you wait, in the not too distant future there'll be farms just raising the genetically correct Turducken, not today's version of a chicken stuffed inside a duck, which is then stuffed inside a turkey. If they can breed strange dog breeds(like the Puggle) then the Turducken is the next step. So yes, Happy Thanksgiving. Anyways, I head off to the airport in 6 hours and I'll be landing in Oregon pretty much(assuming everything goes smoothly) 12 hours from now...excited doesn't even begin to sum up how I'm feeling right now! haha.

How about an art update?

Here are a few drawings from my newly started sketchbook....and a sneak peek at one of my film characters!


A little sketch I did in preparation for my perspective homework. I didn't get a chance to snap a shot of the final piece I turned in this morning. I'm pretty happy with it---can't go wrong with elephants.

For our next animation assignment we have to design ourselves as kids and then animate a single shot scene(this is due around Dec. 13th). It's our final project for the rest of the semester, anyways, here's a possible kid-me. And to counter the cute drawing, here's a not so cute one:

Heeeere's....PILOT! I've officially named both of my characters, anyways, here's one of them. Thought I might sneak another film concept drawing on here. Overall, the film is coming along nicely, I'm diving head-first into visual development while re-boarding many of the scenes to make the story that much richer. Can't wait to get animating on this!

A goofy review!

Just got back from the screening of Disney's new short "How to Hook up your Home Theater System" starring Goofy. It was fantastic, extremely refreshing to see that kind of 2D animation back on the silver screen! And from what the directors' said, there are many more 2D animation projects in the making! They even mentioned how they're roughly 4 shots away from finishing another 2D short, "The Ballad of Nessie" Anyways, here are some quick notes:

First here are the introductions:
Stevie Wermers-Skelton was a student at CalArts from 1992-1994 and has been at Disney ever since. And on a bit of a cool note, she's the first female at Disney to direct a cartoon.

Kevin Deters has been working at Disney since 1996. Also his first directorial debut.

History of the short:
When Pixar and Disney merged two years ago John Lassester and Ed Catmull made it a priority to bring back the short film division at Disney. With this short especially, they placed great importance on bringing back the classical Disney characters and of course traditional animation. The short is made with that mid-40's style(they really looked to the 1938-1942 era Goofy designs/animation)in mind. Throughout the making of the Goofy short, the team visited the Animation Research Lab and brought a lot of the original Goofy short artwork back, but with a digital retouch. During the presentation they showed photographs of the original cells from various Goofy shorts and then showed their own Goofy short stills to show how much influence the 40's era had on the new version.
Technical details:
The actual animation was divided pretty evenly between 6 animators(the big dogs! Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Dale Baer, etc.) and they alternated between actual paper animation(they showed some rough pencil paper animation that Mark Henn did for a particular sequence! It was mind-blowing, and then they said he did all of the animation on one-layer! Which stunned the crowd! When the short is actually released just look for that final dog-pile sequence after Goofy turns the TV on....ONE LAYER! AH! Also there are several classic Goofy references within that one scene as well, so I'm eager to go watch it frame-by-frame again whenever it's released.) So while some of the animators used paper and pencil animation, others animated using the Cintiq and the software titled, "Harmony" which was also used for clean-up. In the end, they composited the short digitally and at least for tonight, the short was shown on classic 35mm! We watched the short twice and it was very entertaining, wonderful animation! You could just tell the animators were exceedingly happy to be working in traditional animation again. Which worked beautifully with Goofy--part of the presentation included a DVD special that had interviews with all of the animators on the short, so as they put it, "Goofy is designed for maximum expression" and believe me, some of the poses Goofy pulled would have been impossible in CG! They used Photoshop to recreate a lot of the backgrounds and are really using the short film division to test out the best way of combining technological advances with traditional old-school animation techniques and hopefully, bring these into feature film projects(Like The Princess and the Frog). There are several shorts in the making and the directors ended the screening on this note, "It's a great time to be at Disney."

If you want another review, here's one that was posted awhile ago that I absolutely agree with! 2D animation is back at Disney!

Have a Bear

Just posting my bear animation. I cut-out probably 60% of the animation I had intended to use, this part is the only part I thought worked best. I lost inspiration about mid-way through this and initially I thought it looked alright, but now that I'm watching it again.....I'm not very eager for the critique tonight.
Ever see an X-sheet? Yes, no...maybe so? How about an old version sheet from the bear animation(the actual animation is in the 80s as far as how many drawings I used just for the bear):

And the ever imposing stack of animation paper used for the bear, this includes the background, bear, piranhas, and water effects:


And in more entertaining news:
Disney is coming to CalArts tomorrow. According to the sign they're giving us a early screening of the 2d short "How to Hook-Up your Home Theater." The directors are scheduled to come and maybe some of the big animators might show up! Very excited to see this little return to 2D animation. Here's a pretty cool article on it. Anyways, I'll be sure to post something after tomorrow night.