Hi everyone. I'm back to Madrid from my trip to Germany/France/England. Nice to be home with my family. From here I wanted to thanks all those people who made my trip such a fun and full one. Particularly the following people:
In charge of the FMX conference, Peter Plantec and Constanze Buehner, for how nice and caring they were with me in the three days of conference. Peter, you were more than appreciative to all speakers, and was very natural and easy going about the whole thing. For these sorts of conferences and festivals, I personally appreciated this a lot. Wolfram Kampffmeyer for keeping me up to speed throughout the conference as to where to go and who to talk to regarding the different talks. Much appreciated especially when there is so much going on. Also, thank you Christophe Hery (from ILM) to include me in the Virtual Humans panel. I hope the presentation was informative and people got something out of it.
A big thanks to Renee Lamri, Robin McDonald and Chris Ford (and Renderman crew) from Pixar for bringing me to talk to their FMX Pixar/Renderman presentations. I had a great time with them, as well as getting to know some of my more than talented colleagues who I've never got a chance to meet at work personally. Sharon, your talk in lighting/color/cinematography was truly inspiring for me. Robin, Esdras, Afonso, Ziah...Paris rocked.
Also, a big thanks to two Animation Mentor students who made it possible for me to meet the rest of students who I wouldn't get a chance to meet otherwise: Olivier Ladeuix (London) and Tobias Von Burkesroda (Germany). You both organized and stayed in touch with the rest of the students, and it was very helpful to coordinate with all of you. Olivier, next time I'll be sure to get a full night sleep before I meet you guys in London...it was a long week for me. It was a pleasure to get meet you all AnimationMentor students and grads. You made it fun wherever we went to, and I'll repeat next time as many times as possible. :)
I'm hoping I'm not forgetting key names. Thanks for a really fun week. Carlos.
Well, as of tomorrow I'll be off travelling for a couple of weeks. I wanted to bring some stuff up. I'm trying to bring up subjects that are closely related to animation, but that hopefully start making you think of animation in a bigger picture. Animation to me is not just some nice poses, timing and clean curves. There is a lot more to our work than just that, and the longer I do this, the more I realize this. When I first started I just wanted to throw poses and snap them one to another, do a dialogue test and I thought that was animation. Was I wrong.
Throughout the years, acting became about the number one thing for me to study. What acting separates a shot to another. What's comedy? How to push a shot. How much or how little? What makes me laugh, what makes me cry? How can we achieve that given the tools we are given as animators? I studied what makes a Medusa or a Pinocchio shot so incredibly ahead of its time. Was it the draftsmanship? the acting? the voice talent? the animators choices? the execution of these choices? their technique? their staging/composition? How the staging brought the acting to a new level? Well, definitely all of them and more. One of my favourite blogs out there is Mark Andrew's Blog (head of story at Pixar) as he brings up many different areas within filmmaking that open up my film studies and yet, they help my animation as well. Anyways, animation/film is a life long journey. A difficult, exciting and inspiring one all at once.
With that said, I'd also love to know what things are people interested in finding more about. There are plenty of blogs/animation sites out there...but I'm trying to bring the subjects/topics of where I am at currently in my animation/film studies. Would also love to get feedback on the site as well, to see if these posts are being helpful to people out there.
Have a great month everyone! Eat lots, taks lots of naps, and laugh even more. Adios!
To add to an earlier post on film/photography, I wanted to continue saying that regardless of the medium, one thing we should be always aware of is that composition is composition. Before you start anything you'll work on, even if it's an animation, think of the elements you'll be moving around the screen as well as the props. You have some KEY elements you can play with, such as: Screen Depth, Scale, and the previously talked Lines/Angles.. While these are subtle tools, the effect can be not so subtle...and rather powerful.
Composition is key on the planning part.
Check out this link next. Most of these composition painting tips next apply just as much to us animators/filmmakers as to a painter.
For example, take these two Last Supper theme paintings here, one by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1480) and a second one by Emil Nolde (1909).
First of all. What do these images with the same theme tell you, and what do they make you feel? We should always think about that. To me it's simple, the first image brings me peace, the second one somehow makes me uneasy. These two paintings are classic examples of how powerful composition is for artists.
In the first one, we have open space between characters, and the scale/proportion of characters within the arquitecture works great with adding a feeling of peace. Also repeated and symmetrical elements throughout the screen add this purpose as well to the painting. Color palette and repeated color elements are important in here as they add calm.
The second painting is a whole different story. The proportions of the characters, their placement on screen (no head room almost squished on top) and how little to no room is between them, adds that sense of claustrophobia to the painting. Rugged line quality and colortheme also make this painting, somewhat uneasy.
So again, before getting started on your film, still, even animation test...composition is something that should be taken highly into account in the planning stages.
The question Why is an important one in everything we should do.
About one of the hardest things to do is to pitch a story to anyone...even to a friend. And to pitch it well so that's worth his/her time, it's enterntaining, has impact, goes somewhere with it, etc. Stand-Up comedians are basically pitching stories constantly. Some a lot better than other ones, and really with no effort almost. They take the most mundane boring things going on in life, and turn it around 180 degrees into something either profound, hilarious or simply a lot more interesting than the original topic itself. Take this bit off a Bill Cosby routine:
Bill Cosby talks about Dentists. I chose the portion of the anesthesia and the facial reaction. What I enjoy /observed from this is the following:
Sometimes humor can be subjective and work for some people and not work for others. Bill Cosby would work very funny situations along with his sometimes dead pan facial expressions. When he says: "Now the dentist pulls out a needle". This gesture he does showing the size of the needle (being a needle a tiny object) added with his facial expression is what made that work for me.
His slow pace telling the story of the doctor giving the anesthesia shot is contrasted with the extreme reactions of him as a patient. The use of contrast is really good as he's using the full body in pretty funny ways, and the timing is also contrasted.
This contrast is also heightened by the conversation doctor-patient he's using.
He stretches the moment. Sometimes a gag/joke can be enjoyed for longer. So he's stretching his anesthesia moment up until when him as a doctor goes "yes I've been there many times myself" which is another funny reversal in itself.
"This will suck up your face". Once again, his dead pan expression when saying such enormous yet funny exageration is great.
From that point on, the whole section of the face sliding is just pure great facial expressions all along.
It's hard sometimes to make the connection of why things like these apply to us animators, but they certainly apply. Storytellers, in this case stand-up comedians, also do what we as animators do. Take something simple (be it an action, a gesture, a situation, etc), analyze it, study it, and get something unique out of it. In some ways, we are looking for ways to caricaturize life. As animators, we should also do that. Pay attention to those things that perhaps have no importance, and bring something out of it.
For those in Europe interested, I'll be talking at the FMX Conference from May05-08. This is a breakdown of what I'll be talking about:
Monday 5th, 6pm: I'll be giving a talk representing AnimationMentor, to hopefully inspire animators/filmmakers.
Tuesday 6th 11am: While the film Wall-E doesn't come out for another couple of months, therefore not much stuff can be disussed currently for obvious reasons, Pixar/Renderman asked me to briefly talk about it and give a little insight on the process of animating this little robot.
Wednesday 7th 5pm: In the Virtual Humans panel, I'll be discussing my personal experience animating humans both at ILM and at Pixar, from a realistic and stylized point of view.
One of the main reasons I became interested in photography in the first place, was because I was stunned and always curious as to how they managed to get certain looks, certain perspectives, certain angles, depth, colors, etc....you name it. So learning about lenses, DOF, color theory, composition has become something as fun/intricate and educational in the process of film, as animation itself.
My experience studying film so far has been that while the story is heavily carried by the writting/acting, certain films and directors such as Orson Welles, Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, Coen Brothers, Terrence Malick, Jean Pierre Jeunet to name a few, have taken full advantage of using the camera, photography and colors to make story points, and/or to bring the visual style of the film to a level that will tell the story stronger...that's why it's always good for me to read what DPs I've enjoyed such as Conrad Hall, Roger Deakins or Darius Khondji have to say about their process in cinematography.
This is why I wanted to recommend photography/painting as ways to inspire yourself when it comes to creating your own films/compositions. It's been certainly inspiring to learn about it, and then taking a camera and going shooting whatever the hell. Almost to train your eye just as much as how we train it whenever we animate. Here are a few examples from a few films from these Directors' Films I mentioned, which I personally feel have stunning photography throughout which in some cases, not only obviously add to the production value of the film, but gives the film a very unique and distinctive look that stands out.
Citizen Kane (1941)
Days of Heaven (1978)
Fargo (1996)
Blade Runner (1982)
Amelie (2001)
The Orphanage (2007)
These look like stunning individual photographs or paintings. They draw you in for different reasons. Ultimately you want people to feel something (happy, scared, nostalgic, excited, confused, who knows), also make a story point through the camera, put the audience in a state of mind, or bring a mood to a particular scene or character. It's nice to know when working in films, that we have many more elements other than just the character to speak to an audience. And photography and color are some of those tools. Highly recommend studying films you like now thinking what's the photography or colors used in it telling me, and why. Is it making me feel in a certain way? Do the images/color/composition stick with me? If any images do something to you, always ask yourself why, as that's a great part of the learning.
For the those interested in Photography, I came upon this link. What a great smart and simple idea to stabilize your images/footage, and simple enough to carry around in your pocket. 1 Dollar Camera Stabilizer
Wanted to bring a simple tip. Check out this clip of Benicio del Toro from the film "Usual Suspects":
This is something I talked about with my co-worker Ron about this particular acting choice. If you pay attention to his gesture choice he does when he says "I'll flip ya", there is little I can relate to with the gesture. Yet it was so distinctive that it stood out in the film. The entire character and his random choices stood out, and stole the film for me. So, while this is difficult to pull out in animation where things have to be cristal clear in terms of clarity in the acting, it's nice to know we have somewhere to go and that we have room to grow when it comes to our acting choices. A couple of things to think about:
This character can get away with this gestures in big part due to his personality.
If you had a a character doing this kind of stuff constantly throught an entire film, would it be a consistent performance? would it be too much?
When in the film is this needed? The placement of this acting choice in the interrogation sequence montage made this work for me. Think about where things are place in your film, or in your sequence. It'll help to look at the bigger picture.
Think about acting choices NOW. So that we can relate. For exmple, the acting choices in the films from the 40s-50s sometimes tend to be over the top, therefore, current audiences can't really relate.
