What do you need to tell the tribe?
TiredIt's been a busy week for me, and there is a lot to cover but I'll *try* not to drag on. With help of a guide I teefed from a table at the end of Animex this will hopefully have some order to it.
It was the 10th year of Animex [link] , and I'm confident in saying that this has been the best year that I have attended, there have been some absolutely stunning lectures. The Monday and the Tuesday were dedicated to games, the Wednesday was workshops and the Thursday and Friday was Animation.
ANIMEX GAME: day one
On the Monday Animex game started with an opening adress then a look into the future of computer entertainment, this covered looking at the divergence of demographics and how both technology and gameplay might evolve. Next was the presentation on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD remix by Jim Zubkavich and Long Vo from UDON entertainment, it was one of the most amusing lectures due to Long putting additional slides of Street Fighter related hilarity without telling Jim. His reaction to the sudden appearance of 'Street Fighter valentines cards' among other things was brilliant. The art and commitment to keeping the spirit of the original Super Street Fighter II Turbo while evolving the style was amazing.
The next presentation was on the making of Wheelman by Chi-Hung Cheung and Jim Gentile of Midway, a large portion focused on motion capture, I was very pleased to find learn that they believed that you did not need to learn motion capture before applying for a motion capture job, but instead have an understanding on the physics and weight of a character and the ability to accurately show realistic motion. I'm interested in motion capture and well as hand keyed animation, so it was great to hear that I could keep on with learning to animate by hand and still have mocap (note: short for motion capture) as a possibility for employment.
In the evening was the players lounge, I talked to Jim Gentile for a while about mocap. He thought the main flaw with Beowulf in terms of motion is that the director did not get the best performance out of the actors while they were in the mocap suits, Jim has nearly had his nose broken trying to get an American Football player to perform correctly. I guess this means he's quite happy to risk his own health getting a good performance by pissing off American Football players. I talked with a recruiter about things like showreels, internships and keeping in contact with companies, it was very useful and gave me something to think about for when I start applying to companies. The last person I talked to... well I got them confused with someone else...
I unfortunately though Long Vo was Chi-Hung Cheung... I was mortified with myself but quickly tried to pick up my mess by telling him how much I enjoyed the UDON presentation, I ended up talking to him with
for a fairly long time about all sorts of things, like Street Fighter, marrying my way into getting a Greencard and the original transformers movie. I hope I didn't make a bad impression on anyone, and I felt the night went well.ANIMEX GAME: day two
On the Tuesday I attended the first lecture, but was away until lunch with the group of computer animation 3rd years who opted to get their worked looked at by Ed Hooks and James Finlay. It was a great opportunity, Ed looked more at the acting side of the piece, he was generally positive about my piece [link] , though he though that there needed to be a stronger focus and purpose at the start as the character is switching between addressing himself and addressing the camera. I was glad to get such a good response from Ed and it gives me something to build upon. James was more on the animation principals and technical side, he pointed out where my character wasn't moving correctly and where it lacked the right weighting, anticipation and staging. all that gave me some useful feedback to go back and work on my piece(which I will re-start based on the feedback, trying to tweak it is often a time wasting way of approaching animation rather than re-working it).
The final lecture on Tuesday was the lead animator on Left 4 Dead, this was more about game design than animation, but was still interesting. The lectures I've seen valve give have always shown their dedication to making a solid game and creating brilliant gameplay.
WORKSHOP
On the Wednesday I was meant to be doing a workshop with Mark Walsh (who has been an animator at Pixar for 10 years), but as more people left for their respective workshops it seemed like something was wrong. Unfortunately he was throwing up in his hotel room after catching a nasty bug on the tube from London, so Chris Williams (the organizer, and also one of my lecturers) offered us a refund and the chance to go on Ed Hook's workshop. Naturally I went to the Ed Hooks workshop after enjoying it so much last year. It was great as a reminder of acting theory and his own ideas, though it was a huge amount of information and I would not want to post explanations of his ideas without asking him first. If you are into acting, animation, narrative or just some of the other theories that he covers have a look at his website [link] , his book 'Acting for Animators' and if you ever get the opportunity I would highly recommend attending one of his workshops. In the animation world he is held in very high regard by a great number of people, but he is humble and extremely passionate about the craft.
ANIMEX TALK: day one
After the opening address Dave Throssell of Fluid Pictures talked about setting up a company and the business side of animation, it was very useful for my studio and business practice and I found it both interesting and amusing. Later on Ed Hooks gave a lecture on the future of performance, he was very well received and delivered a brilliant answer to a long winded question about going back to the roots of animation referencing Egyptian hieroglyphics, cave paintings, etc.
"Boy, I'd sure like to party with you and the Egyptians!"
Tom Martinek of ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) gave a presentation on creating the suit(s) for Iron Man, it was a great presentation and seeing how they achieved the look and movement of the suit was amazing. Tom was also another speaker who handled questions well.
some guy: "What do you know about Iron Man 2?"
Tom: "More than you"
I'll point out now that breaking a non-disclosure agreement is a good way to loose your job and become un-employable, so don't be annoyed the next time you see someone who can't talk about a movie. After the ILM talk was Rhythm and Hues, Hans Rijpkema talked about the rigging (character controls) and animation on the latest hulk movie, I found this fascinating and would love to work with one of their rigs... but first I would need to get hired by them and that's no small feat. As per usual they had the 'blooper/i got bored' reel where the hulk did things like punch off Daniel Craig's head, attack marines as an army of mini-hulks which formed a mega-hulk, weird animation tests and hulk posing to 'I'm too sexy for my shorts'. It was hilarious
One of the designers who worked on 'Horton Hears a Who', Jason Sadler, talked about the design and use of colour in the movie, he presented some beautiful artwork which was all strongly influenced by the Dr. Seuss style, the concept art and colour scripts were absolutely amazing, he presented ideas on colour theory as well which was very interesting. The real shame is that the artwork from the movie will not be seen by the public since the publishers do not feel it is a sensible financial decisions.
Since he was so keen to give a workshop, Mark Walsh put on a short one after the last lecture, he's a great guy and really passionate about what he does as well as retaining the purity of the art-form. In the time he had he was only able to cover the animation principals, but hearing his advice on them was brilliant, he also answered questions and gave general advice on animation. I just wish we could have had a full workshop with him, but I'm very appreciative that he made the time to do a shorter one.
After the workshop I went to the networking event talked to a few professionals while picking up a couple of business cards for companies based in London as well as talking to Scott F Johnston who has worked on classic movies such as the Iron Giant and Beauty and the Beast, and Tom Martinek of ILM.
ANIMEX TALK: day two
The day started with a panel based on how to get into the industry, each of the members of the panel was supplied with a porno mag, it was rather amusing, the 'over 50's' one probably wasn't appreciated as much. Regardless of the risque start the panel was great, covering different ways of getting into the industry as well as the need for traditional skills and the drive to work.
Mark Walsh returned to give a brilliant and enthusiastic presentation on the Pixar short "Presto!". He covered how it looked back to the classic 2D approach to animation and covered the development of the story from concept, to animatic to blocking and finally showed the final product. If you haven't seen it you should, it really is amazing.
Charles Solomon, a man described as "the only other man who can converse with Hayao Miyazaki (co-founder studio Ghibli), the other being John Lasseter (founder of Pixar)" gave a presentation on the evolution of Mickey Mouse, it was an incredibly engaging lecture. He is an incredibly intelligent man and possibly the greatest animation historian.
Scott F Johnston gave a presentation on the movement from 2D to 3D and back again. He made some great points on how to blend 2D and 3D together, as this has been done poorly in many places, it was a great lecture and had some great ideas to consider.
The final stretch was looking at Disney's latest 3D movie 'Bolt', the creation of the characters including the rigging approach was covered, though I found the previous lecture on 'The Biology of Bolt' to be more useful. Stuart Sumida who works with studios to perfect the movement of animated animals covered how they approached the locomotion and rigging of characters based on bone and muscle structure as well as using reference of animals in motion. I took a lot of notes from this as I want to add animal locomotion to my showreel, so this was a very useful lecture an I will be checking out more of his work on the subject.
It's been an incredible week and I need time to recover, there is just so much information running around my head and in my notepad... so for now I'll be taking a rest. Next up will be getting my own character rigged so i can get her animated.
Peace out
Eager
Lazy
Sociable
Happy
, and now since I don't know what else to say
