Abney & Teal Animation Reel

Since March 2011 I have been working on a great television series called The Adventures of Abney & Teal. I started as a Junior Animator and have been learning so much. Quite recently an opportunity arose and I was offered the promotion role of Animator. So from January 2012 I will be working on the show as an Animator. Here is a video with all the shots I worked on in 2011. The password is ragdoll.

Slow Motion Break Dance Reference

Some really great shots here which could be useful for reference.



Found on Feedbaktor Animus

Simon Draws

Kyle Balda Walk Cycle Tutorial

Finally, some great tutorials on YouTube!



Found on Spungella

Jason Schleifer on Character Arcs

Jason Schleifer gives a great talk at TEDxYouth on creating your own arc.

DJ Nicke Animation Workflows

Another great person in the Animation community is DJ Nicke. He interviewed Jean-Denis Haas below and also runs the Animation Salvation website (which, if i'm honest, I have yet to figure out how to use).

But I just discovered a few of his tutorials and they are brilliant! The first one about facial animation has come my way at a perfect time when I am going to be concentrating on a facial animation piece very soon! I love how quick and easy he makes it seem - not so daunting anymore! I hope I can find more of his tutorials in the future because they are so helpful and will improve mine and everyone else's animation.



Notes from Video 1 - 4 steps of facial animation

Step 1 - FOUNDATION
Know the audio file inside out. If you don't have it in your head, how are you going to put it on the computer?

Step 2 - STRUCTURE
Build the Open, Close, Wide and Narrow.
For Open and Close: Place your elbow on the table and place your chin on your fist, then recite the dialogue at at regular pace and feel where the different structure's fall on the dialogue. Put down the structure keys on the timeline.
For Wide and Narrow: Place you finger and thumb on the corners of you mouth. Put these structure keys on the timeline.
Finally, shift the keyframes between 2-5 frames forward because we produce the mouth shape before we make the sound.

Step 3 - DETAILS
Add the rough emotion to the eyes: eyebrows and eye-gaze (direction). Then pull back and add the mouth emotion.

Step 4 - POLISH
Spend more time here. Adding the features unique to the character. Add head tilts, micro-expressions and weight (cheeks, jaw, lips). Concentrate on the 12 principles. Watch your arcs!



Notes from Video 2 - 7 steps within the 4 steps

Step 1 - FOUNDATION
1) Orientation & Pre-planning
Know your scene! How does it fit in with the bigger picture/story/character arc? Know the audio inside out. Speak to other animators, lead and supervisor to know where it fits in.

2) Imagineering
You know the scene, the story and the audio... now play the scene in your head and imagine it was being animated by the best animator on the planet. Quickly thumbnail ideas.

3) Inspiration
Watch reference material, be inspired and get excited to keep you going.

4) Planning
Re-imagine it again with all the details and thumbnail the the key poses while remembering to use the 12 principles.

Step 2 - STRUCTURE
5) Blocking
Have no distractions and completely focus! Blocking (stepped keyframes) should incorporate these details: squash & stretch, appeal, timing and clarity. It should be developed to the point of telling the story. Once that's done take a break!

Step 3 - DETAILS
6) 2nd Pass
No distractions and focus! Add more keys with these details; anticipation, arcs, secondary action, slow in & slow out, spline your keyframes, reverse your arcs, refine timing and a little bit of overlap and follow-through. Take another good break and get it looked at!

Step 4 - POLISH
7) Polish
Get into THE ZONE! Add more secondary action, overlap and moving keyframes around.

Bill Plympton Masterclass

On the 28th October this year, I attended a Bill Plympton Masterclass at Wolverhampton's FLIP Animation Festival. There were many great events taking place this year and I wish I could've attended them all, but I only managed to go to this one, but was well worth it!

The evening began with a two hour Q&A about him and his work.

Bill is drawing the character for his next feature film called Cheatin. It is still a WIP but it looks really cool. There's lots of typical Plympton style crazy perspective drawings and cross shading. I can't wait to see it.

In this photo Bill is drawing a caricature of my super talented friend and colleague Mike Blackman.

Here is the caricature Bill did for me. I really like it, but when I show it to people they don't think it looks like me!

I decided to buy Idiots & Angels because I knew it was a great film and I didn't want to go away empty handed. I even got it signed which is pretty cool.

Mike, Bill and I pose for a photo! Bill's expression is somewhere between normal and smile for the photograph

Towards the end of the evening, Bill gave a longer talk about his work and we got to watch a lot of them on the projector. My favourite was The Cow Who Wanted To Be A Hamburger and another short (very short at about 30 seconds) about a woman who waits on a cliff overlooking the sea for her lover to sail back to her, which leads to a sort of blinding agony.

When he spoke about Guard Dog Global Jam, he asked if Mike could go up on stage to talk about his own experience with this unique animation experience.

It was a good night and really good to finally meet Bill Plympton.

Jean-Denis Haas

Jean-Denis is one of my favourite animators. His work is so good and inspiring and he has a great online presence where he shares so much of his knowledge. I have learnt a lot from him and still keep learning new things. The animation industry is lucky to have someone like him. I couldn't find his showreel of movie animation work online, but check out some of his other, spare time work.





Here is a brilliant interview by DJ Nicke of Animation Salvation...

Behind The Scenes: The Pirates!

Immensely looking forward to this new Aardman picture!

Her Morning Elegance

Her Morning Elegance was a music video created for singer-songwriter Oren Lavie by Oren Lavie and Israeli animators Yuval & Merav Nathan, featuring Shir Shomron and photography by Eyal Landesman.

Reel Great Advice

Written by cosmicfool on the 11 second club blog...

I just finished reading a book titled Writing Movies For Fun and Profit.
Its basically a realistic satire into what the film industry is looking for and how to make it as a writer. With that being said a lot of the wisdom's they offer to writers apply to animators.
So in point form here is some blunt food for thought for the young animators or job seekers out there.

1. Studios are only interested in making piles of money, period.

2. If you know what it is you want to do, and know where you want to work, research it. Live close to it. Tailor everything you do to it.

3. Discipline. This is what separates amateurs from professionals. ALWAYS BE ANIMATING. If you want to work in the industry and are presently not, you should feel compelled to animate everyday.
Why do you need to animate everyday?
1) Most of what you do won't be on your reel.
2) You will improve with everything you do.
3) Animating something becomes easier after you have done it once, imagine after 100 times. Seriously, animate a ball once. Time yourself. Save that scene. Do it 50 more times. Time yourself. Only compare the first and the last. I promise you, not only will the last one look better. It will have took you 1/10 the time.
4) You will have things to show a studio if they ask to see any of your work that is not on your reel, and it won't look like crap. 5)You won't still be in love with the shot that no one but you and your mom like, and you will be more inclined to throw it in the garbage and start something better, or you will be more inclined to take feedback and fix it.

4. Observe things everywhere. Life is one giant pose and character library. A good animator observes how ppl around them move, how they behave, how they hold themselves etc... If your not at home animating, you better be observing things that will help your animation.

5. This is the most important thing in this list. Everything you ever animate, ever, needs to be entertaining. If it's not, stop what you are doing, right away. Unless you are learning a principle, or its a school lesson, STOP NOW. Or unless you are entering some odd film competition, that 95 ppl out of 100 would want to punch you and the films watched in the face. STOP. If you don't know what's entertaining, or how to make a shot entertaining, STOP, ask everyone you know to look at your work and what you can do to inject entertainment into it. If you still don't know, STOP, watch every movie you can. If you still don't, STOP, rethink your career. All humans watch t.v, cartoons, movies and play video games with one purpose and only one purpose, TO BE ENTERTAINED.

6. Don't reinvent the wheel. No one wants you to. There are 12 principles of animation. Learn them, use them. If you are getting feedback and are always hearing ppl tell you that you're missing some of the principles. In all honesty, if you haven't mastered those principles stop doing advanced animation, you aren't ready.

7. Don't waste anyone's time(this goes for yourself as well). If you are seeking feedback to build a reel, and aren't applying what people are telling you, they will stop giving you feedback. This sounds harsh, but I've seen it happen many many times. If your reel is still under construction, you should be devoting the majority of your waking time to it, any other time is wasted time. If you know what you are putting on your reel, you should seek feedback on every shot, until you know how to structure your reel to be as entertaining as possible. Fingers crossed ppl are still willing to help you at this stage. If you are having someone watch your reel, they don't want to see 5 minutes of average work. We all know after 5 seconds if we want to watch your reel. If we aren't impressed at 10 we stop, if we are bored by 20 you've lost us. Think of it this way, two writers who have made 1.5 billion dollars for a studio only get 10 minutes to pitch a new script. How much time should an animator get to sell their reel?

The Secret of NIMH

I hadn't heard of this movie until today and I think it looks pretty good, so i'll try to check it out in the next week or so. Made in 1982 and directed by Don Bluth.

Voice cast:
Elizabeth Hartman as Mrs. Brisby
Dom DeLuise as Jeremy
Derek Jacobi as Nicodemus
Arthur Malet as Mr. Ages
Hermione Baddeley as Auntie Shrew
John Carradine as the Great Owl
Peter Strauss as Justin
Paul Shenar as Jenner
Aldo Ray as Sullivan
Shannen Doherty as Teresa Brisby
Wil Wheaton as Martin Brisby
Jodi Hicks as Cynthia Brisby
Ian Fried as Timothy Brisby
Tom Hatten as Farmer Paul Fitzgibbons
Lucille Bliss as Mrs. Beth Fitzgibbons
Edie McClurg as Miss Right
Joshua Lawerence as Billy Fitzgibbons



A 15 minute featurete from the DVD is also available on YouTube. The final monologue from Bluth is really great. Be sure to check it out.

Also, watch this piece of comedy by Dom DeLuise talking about what comedy is... HERE

Family Dog

1987 Pilot made by Brad Bird

Octopus Walks On Land

Maybe one day I will need this for reference! But if not, it's still pretty amazing to watch.

Feet Reference

Le Matos "88mph" music video from LE MATOS on Vimeo.

The Smurfs: Making Of

Making The Characters

Making The Village...

Prelude To Eden

This is a great short film that has an amazing back-story which I had to share.



You can find out HERE that this film helped to jumpstart Animo software (Cambridge Animation), which later became Toon Boom, and Cinesite.

Mickey's Surprise Party

Found this nice short Disney/Mickey film on the A. Film. L.A. Blog. It was made and funded by Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) to sell their products.



There are some very cool smears in the film too. Here's one example...

The Human Animal (1994)

The Human Animal is a six part BBC Documentary series covering different aspects of the human evolution.

1. "The Language of the Body"
- Gestures: Greetings, Insults, Signals, Gesticulations
- Facial Expressions: Stares, Smiles, Tells


2. "The Hunting Ape"
- Diet: Fondness for sweets, Culinary variety
- Evolution: Arboreal vegetarianism, Savannah meat-eating, Cooperative hunting with weapons, Food preparation, Aquatic ape hypothesis
- Vestigal hunting behavior: Jobs, Sport Hunting, War


3. "The Human Zoo"
- Urban Tribalism: Familiarity, Theft, Uniforms, Rituals, Conflict, Social status, Territory


4. "Biology of Love"
- Courtship: Finding partners, Gender signals, Dating, Tie signs, Pair bonding, Intercourse


5. "The Immortal Genes"
- Life cycle: Infant-parent interaction, Baby signals, Child behavior, Rites of passage, Cultural indoctrination, Fighting aging, Grandparenting, Afterlives


6. "Beyond Survival"
- Creativity: Body adornment, Architectural embellishments, Vehicles, Art
- Artistic progression: Innate scribbling, Realism
- Play: Childhood experimentation, Adult inventiveness, Sports, Thrill-seeking, Symbolic thinking
- Erratum: Firewalking has been explained.

Harry Rountree

Harry Rountree was a prolific illustrator and here are some examples of his anthropomorphic characters.

Found on Deja View

Twinings Gets You Back To You

Just brilliant! A very unique and warm style of animation. Animation created by Psyop. It's a shame about the music though. Muting it works better!

Fear Reference Images for Halloween

A hidden camera on the show Nightmares Fear Factory caught these incredible images. Brilliant for reference. A few of my favourites are below and you can find the rest of them HERE.

Jumping Spider Reference Video

The Phidippus Putnami is a jumping spider, although unfortunately it doesn't jump here in the video. Just walks around a bit and stares at the camera. Amazing to see how quickly it moves though. I'd like to see this in slow-mo.

The First Snow of Winter

The First Snow of Winter (1998)

The main characters voices are played by:
Miriam Margolyes
Dermot Morgan (Father Ted) who died sadly before the completion and is dedicated to him.
Kate Sachs





It was made at Hibbert Ralph for the BBC.

More sources of information:
Wikipedia
Toon Hound
Mark Mason Here is Mark Mason's showreel from the film...

How snails travel when no-one's looking

Animation Scout Tutorials

Amazing tutorials made by Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin. Found on Imagimation.

Soundtrack: Gentle Giant - Nothing At All

High Heel Walking Reference

via Monotreme Dreams

Skateboarding Reference

via Scribble Junkies

How To Get Into Morder

This made me laugh so much. First watch the GIF. Then Look at the photo.

^-This inspired this. . .

via How To Carve Roast Unicorn

Get A Job!

This reminded me of my school days where the teachers and career councillors would tell us to do everything that this animation says.




"Out-of-print and hard to find , but deserves a wider viewing, Brad Caslor's 1985 film "Get A Job" follows the tribulations of a cartoon character, Bob Dog, as he hunts for a job. Technically, it's an "educational film" dealing with self-motivation, preparing a résumé, contacting people by phone and mail, getting ready for an interview and the interview itself. More than that it's a brilliant homage to Bob Clampett and other cartoony animation of the 1940's."

Found on Smears, Multiples and Other Gimmicks

The Muppet Show - The Devil Went Down to Georgia

I love this song and seeing the Muppets perform it just made my day!

Skateboarding Bails and Fails Reference (at 1000fps)

via Spungella

Tap Dancing Reference

The brilliant, Fred Astaire.

Concentrating Face Reference

This guy is great. Fast forward to around 45 seconds which is when it gets good.





via Spungella

The Flaming C

Back story:



First 2D animation:



2D animation returns:



First CG animation:

DGA Tribute to Steven Spielberg

MORE

Your Friend The Rat

Written by Jim Capobianco

The Hard Sun - Another Time Lapse Video

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day taking various time lapse shots around Stratford Upon Avon on a beautiful sunny day. I had so much fun out in the sun that I almost forgot to capture the sun set, so I ran back home as quickly as I could to get the last 15 minutes or so of the sun setting.

I think I am definitely improving my time lapse skills now that I am able to use a nice camera; Canon 40D. Soon i'll have to purchase my own though as i'm sure I won't always be able to borrow it from work, and it would be good if I wasn't restricted to having a camera on just the weekends.

The music is by Plaid and is taken from the Tekkonkinkreet OST - a brilliant film I watched recently and was totally enthralled by.

Daria GIF

The Hangman by Maurice Ogden

The sound quality is unfortuantely terrible as it was captured and digitised from Betamax.

This is an illustated and animated (mostly floating paper) rendition of Maurice Ogden's poem "The Hangman".
Narrated by Herschel Bernardi. I really like his voice.
Music composed and conducted by Serge Hovey. The score is incredible.
Produced in 1964.

Quick Physics Reminder

Found on Hueboxx

The Hunger Artist

Incredible short stop motion film created by Tom Gibbons (animation supervisor at Tippet) based on the short story by Franz Kafka.

Synopsis:

Set in a city both past and present, on a deserted street where only the distant sounds of life blow by. The Hunger Artist stands alone, locked in his cage. Once famous and adored by the crowds, he now performs alone. The Hunger Artist is the story of one man's travel from glory to anonymity and into the greatest performance of his life.
A stop-motion animated film, The Hunger Artist is based on a short story by Franz Kafka. The viewer first sees a lone figure renting out a cage. He goes into the cage, unpacks his bag, and locks himself in. This strange character is the Hunger Artist: a performer whose art consists of denying himself nourishment.

Mickey Mouse - Runaway Brain

In 1995 Walt Disney Feature Animation Paris produced this 7 minute short film; Runaway Brain.

Animation by Andreas Deja, Garry Dunn, Deboissy Sylvian.

I love the reference to Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, see if you notice it.

The Making Of: The Jungle Book

Something Left, Something Taken

Very nice short film about a close encounter with the Zodiac Killer.



You can find their extensive Making Of on their blog.

Yellowbird Showreel 2010

A very cool and exciting way to show a demo reel!

The Cloud Generator - Time Lapse

This is a short time lapse video I shot and put together over the weekend.

Equipment:
Canon 40D
Yongnuo MC-36b
EFS 17-85 lense
Polarise Filter
EFS 55-220mm zoom lense

Music by: "Mogwai - I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Best of the Worst Movie Lines

I've been listening to Adam and Joe on BBC 6 Music recently, and their podcasts online. They have a brilliant show and their sense of humour gets me laughing so hard. This post is inspired by them and their show.












(via Kevin Flynn)

Game of Thrones Opening Title Sequence

Last night I wanted to watch Game of Thrones to see what all the hype has been about. Unfortunately I caught the last episode of the first season so I had missed out on much of the story.

What first caught my attention though, was the impressive opening title sequence. A really cool walkthrough of the fictional world of the story made in CG. Here it is in HD...



The Hollywood Reporter has gone into great detail to describe what the opening title sequenec means. But I would really like to find out who made it and how. Watch this space for more info.

Michael Caine Acting Masterclass

Bruno Bozzeto's 'Bolero' from 'Allegro Non Troppo'

More info here.

Via Scribble Junkies

Walt Disney's Multi Plane Camera

The Core Skills of VFX

"The Core Skills of VFX Handbook has one simple but ambitious aim: to improve the new entrant skills available for the UK's VFX industry.

The handbook is relevant to both students and tutors; it is designed to assist universities and colleges to raise the standard of VFX courses available and therefore the new talent available in the UK.

The handbook has been prodcuced following a sustained dialogue between Skillset, the industry and educators. It is a clear presentation of the VFX industry's voice on new entrant skills, setting out what skills the industry needs to remain world beating."

Core Skills VFX Handbook