Halfway finished already ????

How time flies by! I am already halfway through animationmentor - can't quite believe it myself, it still feels like I began just a couple of weeks ago.

These last days before christmas break we are summing up and reviewing what we learned in class 3 the past three months. It has all been about body mechanics, animating physicality, and I must say that this was the hardest class so far with lots of hard work on the assignments but also with a lot of new information and "stuff" pouring in all the time that somehow caused some kind of information overload in my poor head.
At this stage it really feels like I could stay at this level for months or years and just repeat the things I've learned so far, read the same stuff over, do the same kind of physicality exercises and work on getting to understand this complex area of animation better.

But - come january there will be new challenges as we go into acting classes. I'm really looking forward to that immensly, it will be a lot of fun.... but... I really could have used another three months of jumping and running and leaping and falling and balancing.

Here is my compiled "anim jam"-assignment from the advanced body mechanics class. I hope to get back to it later, in polish and portfolio class, and do some more polishing and maybe add some more detail to the setting.

Obvious? No, I don't think so.

I find this clip very, very interesting. We are all so used to the everyday phenomenon of gravity, it is all around us, all the time. We sit, we stand up, we walk, we lift things... and all the time there is this strong force pulling everything DOWN that we have to fight.You know? Apples fall to the ground. We have big, bulky muscles in our legs working hard to push us up everytime we rise up from a chair...  Gravity.

We are so used to all these things that we hardly ever think about it. We are so used to the force of gravity that we don't even SEE it happening.

Now, that is exactly what an animation student has to learn to see and understand. Gravity in action. And that is why I love this clip. Suddenly you see how STRONG gravity really is. It's pulling that man across the room! And you see how the acceleration of a falling object works - just look at that cup falling off the table. It's amazing, isnt it?

Actually this would be a really fun clip to use as a reference for an animation exercise...  :)

YouTube - Drunk tilted Room Sketch

Bradford animation festival 2010

It was cold, wet and windy in Bradford. But the National media museum was packed with warm people who all love animation. Something like 700 people had shown up to join the event, said the lady at the box office when I asked.
This was the 17th edition of the Bradford animation festival and it really is a likeable event, right in my taste. Lots of good stuff to take part of, but still small enough to have a certain familiar and cozy feeling about it. You do have a chance to talk to the bigshots here too after screentalks and workshops, no one is too distant.

The audience is pouring into pictureville cinema waiting for
the screentalk by Paul Mendoza of Pixar.

There were all kinds of animation gathered here at this festival, in the competition class you found newer productions from the recent years, but there were also room for retroperspectives, lookbacks, children's productions (ASIFA), classic narrative storytelling and more abstract shorts experimenting in form and style.

At every festival there is usually some kind of sneak preview of upcoming features, so also this time in Bradford. At the festival opening night we saw "Chico and Rita". A fresh english-spanish production telling a story full of jazz music, love and heartache, all placed in Cuba, Paris, New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood with the story beginning in the year of 1948. The film is seductive and creates a strong atmosphere, much thanks to the wonderful way in which the music is used throughout the film. A really good music film!





Sadly I didn't get the chance to participate in as many workshops as I would have wanted to. Actually I only got into one of them, a motion capture workshop demonstration, which was both cool and interesting.  (jeez, there is REALLY a lot of cleanup to do after each capture !!!)

But I enjoyed more of the screentalks instead, don't think I missed any of them... Here are two of the highlights from this year's screentalks. 


NEXUS RETROSPECTIVE

Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith and Jim LeFevre at Nexus, an independent production company and animation studio in London, gave a very interesting insight to the creative aspect of their work and how they go about it when they decide on HOW to meet a customer's order for a commercial or a television short. Very intersting how openmindedly they weigh pros and cons of different animation styles and what a broad palette of production types they choose from. As they are brainstroming ideas and/or investigating the script or idea they are presented they always ask themselves if this idea would be best done with live action, stop motion or CG or some kind of mixture of these...  their showreel proved them also to be a very creative crew, IMHO.

INCEPTION TALK

Paul Franklin of the VFX company double negative gave us a detailed and thorough insight to the production of all the visual effects of the film "inception". Lots of behind-the-scene-photos, lots of examples from the process of making the visual effects made this appearance one of the most interesting at the festival.

This is the giant mirror that was used for
some of the special effects in Inception

GENE DEITCH

Maybe the most interesting and certainly most heartwarming appearance was done by Gene Deitch and his wife Zdenka - partners in life AND in animation.  We got to hear the story of a young animator who was asked to move to Prag in the late 50s and 60s to work at a studio there.  An amazing story of the development of the animation artform unfolded, as told by Gene, we learned what it was like to be "the only free American in Prague during 30 years of Communism." - and we also got to hear a wonderful love story.

You can read about Gene at his site: http://www.genedeitch.com/

 

For a little while I thought that I would be the only representant from animation mentor at this festival, but my classmate Ian Yale met up for friday's show and joined us at the talk that Paul Mendoza from Pixar gave.

You know what? Webcam and chat on skype is nice - but meeting
in real life is better. :) 

In conclusion, I can only give my warm recommendations to everybody to go and visit this festival upcoming years - IF you like the cozy atmosphere of the somewhat smaller festival.  I know I do. 
Cheers!

First part of anim jam

Still some polishing to do on this one... and I didn't really have the time to meet all of Sean's notes especially on the setting... and the timing could also be pushed a little, it's still a little even - so if I get back to this one later I will have to work on it some more... But for now it's the final version of part 1.



And here is where I am at right now; planning and making rough blocking for part 2 of the airport story... I will have to push it a little, since I'm planning to take a couple of days away from school in two weeks. I'm going on a little trip to Bradford, England, to take part in the Bradford Animation Festival! Yippeee!

Hello class 3! ...and first blocking for part 1 of "anim jam"

Class 2 "psychology of body mechanics" was mindblowingly good! I learned sooo much from it. Now I am hoping that class 3 "advanced body mechanics" will overwhelm me just as much.

My mentor for this class is Sean Ermey, have a look at his site here: http://www.seanermey.com/
Looking forward to be guided by him through the following three months.

At the start of this class we got to choose if we wanted to keep all three assignments of this class collected under a unifying theme ("anim jam") or if we wanted to have different themes for each assignment ("animation exercise").
I'll go for the anim jam and the choice of my theme is "Stewie at the airport"...

The story goes something like this:
Stewie is late for his flight, steps accidently on slippery floor and does a little sliding around on it, loses his ticket which gets stuck high up on a roof beam.
In the second part he will have to climb up there and get it - and of course it ends with him falling smack to the ground (breaking a leg and getting severe brain concussion in the process).
In the third part he will have head and leg in bandages, jumping along on a crutch on his way to the plane. He slides on his crutch and the ticket flies off and falls down into a draining hole in the ground. END.

So there I have my work for the rest of this fall piled up for me.

Here is a first initial blocking of part 1.
Of course things are missing here and there... The part where the legs aren't moving at all right now is where they later will spin around as crazy...



Cheers!

Eric Goldberg talking pose-to pose, spacing and breakdowns

Still a little mad at myself for cheating the planning stage in my last assignment I stumbled across these clips, uploaded by Jeremy Hopkins.

Animation guru Eric Goldberg talks about animators not using strong poses enough.
Eric says he usually figures it all out before he even starts to draw. Pre-thinking, that's what is lacking today with many young animators.

Do I feel guilty as charged!



What's missing in CG and hand drawn reels.



benefits of planning



benefits of pose to pose in CG animation



about Ken Harris, who knew EXACTLY where to put his breakdown drawing



That's it for this time. Thanks Jeremy for uploading these clips.

And don't forget to check out Eric's book "animation crash course". You can find it on amazon...!

class 2: what bad planning can get you into

This was my final job from class 2 at Animation mentor.

I learned a lot from this assignment, the main lesson being, "it's no bloody good to be to sloppy in your planning, stupid!"

I wanted to do a nerdy dance of some kind ( and of course Stewie would have to perish at the end of it ) - so I searched for some funny clips and found these on youtube. Nothing wrong with them per se.



Fun references, right? Just to go ahead with planning? Yeah. So I did some sketches:

Here is the problem; I cheated, I didn't do them well enough! Breakdown positions weren't there! Worse; I didn't THINK about how the dance would transition from pose to pose. And even WORSE; I didn't really think of it in blocking either.

The result of this was that I made a first pass of blocking, noted all things I hadn't prepared well enough, had to start over and redo the blocking - just to find even more stuff that i should have thought of in the very beginning.  Highly frustrating when you KNOW that you could have avoided much of this by giving the whole thing a little more time in the planning stage!

The final clip looks like this, and I am NOT pleased with it. It lacks snappiness, feels slow and has not near enough "nerdiness" in it.  Because I was lost in all sorts of "redo it"-traps through the process and forgot about the big picture.



What can I say? A good learning experience, after all. :-)

Class 2 - Killing Stewie by weather

After Ballie the 2-legged poor bastard had been killed by getting crushed under a falling weight, the next in turn was Stewie - this time it was the armless version of Stewie we got to work on. A good thing really, it makes you concentrate on the hips and spine and learn to do that stuff before you get distracted with hands and arms. Smart thinking, AM.  :)

In this second assignment I wanted to let Stewie die in a horrible storm. (The actual title of the assignment was "walking in heavy wind". But I of course needed some death in there too, I have my theme of "horrible, unexpected deaths" to attend to.)

So this was my first scenario:

But as I timed out the scene it got a little too long... (we had to keep it under 200 frames)  so I simplified the whole thing and let him just blow off a cliff instead. Like this:

Our mentor, Leigh Rens, said his OK and three weeks later this was the result:





With a little grass waving hard in the wind and the occasional leaf flying by the illusion will be there, I think. Maybe I'll get back to those props and environment things if I ever get back to polishing this shot later on.

Soon I'll post the third assignment of this class. It's still not completely finished so you may have to wait a week or two for it.  Cheers!

Class 2 - psychology of body mechanics.

It's been a while since I updated anything, so now I thought that I would get my ass out of the wagon (don't know if that's understandable english but in swedish it's an often used expression) and show some of the latest stuff I have been working on at animation mentor.

By now we are getting into the final weeks of class 2, "psychology of body mechanics", and in this class we have been working on three different shots, all of them paying special attention to body mechanics.
I'll make a blog note on each of my three assignements, this is the first one, the other two will be coming up shortly.

So - when you are working on one piece for three weeks you might just as well make it fun and entertaining to yourself. Which is what i did. I decided to make my three pieces add up to a little series of "horrible, unexpected deaths".

The body mechanics assignment was to make a 180 degree turn. So I videotaped myself to get reference for the body mechanics stuff and made this planning sketch.

My mentor in this class, Leigh Rens (cool guy and awesome animator BTW!), liked the setup so I went ahead with this plan and for three weeks I worked on just this little piece.

But I needed a sudden death too, to keep my theme going. Some unexpected thing was what I wanted. It ended up looking like this:




If I get back to polishing this stuff I'll put a text on the weight saying: "property of Monty Python". LOL.

I simply love "Charlie and Lola"

Not much more to add, really. "Charlie and Lola" is a wonderful series!
And it's no wonder to me that it has been such a success. The stories and the art of Lauren Child is fantastic! And the style of the tv-production fascinates me too, it's done in modern digital cutout style, which leaves the viewer plenty of room for his or her own imagination - and those true and well made children voices in the soundtrack also make it really easy to connect with the characters on screen.

Here is an old clip (from 2008) when the production scooped a double-BAFTA win at the EA British Academy Children's Awards. Children's presenter Barney Harwood interviews Lauren Child, Claudia Lloyd and Kitty Taylor backstage to find out the secrets behind their success.





And here you can see an example of the thrilled audience watching the show:

The hard life of freelancing

It's a hard life. Especially for freelancers.

A sheep on the roof

This short was made by  a french filmmaker, Rémy Schaepman - a lovely piece about the ordinary lives we live...

Quidam dégomme (A sheep on the roof) from Rémy Schaepman on Vimeo.

How to know you are an animation student

I stumbled across this blogpost with some pictures from a calendar by an x-ray machine company.
You know that you are an animation student when you see this kind of picture and the first thing that interests you is how the spine is bent, the curve from the hips up to the neck, and the second thing is the angle of the hips compared to the angle of the shoulders... :-)

Here is another one. - Whoah, look how the spine is compressed there in the middle part! This is crazy, man! :-)

Class 1 is over and done !

This is my progressreel with the exercises and assignments from the first class of Animation Mentor. Only 5 more classes to go. - Jeez the time went by fast! :-)

sketches portraying "exhaustion"

I notice that the weeks are flying by here and it's getting harder and harder to keep up with this blog. School is keeping me pretty busy.

Not that I'm very surpsrised at all my missing updates, I have seen this thing happen to other AM students before me. Their blogs seems to be best updated just before class 1 starts and a couple of weeks into the school. Every second day there is a new update. Then - suddenly - there is a HUGE gap to the next post which usually is posted somewhere in class 3, half a year later... :-)


Well, I'm going to try and NOT let it get that far. I'll try and keep up!

Here are some recent sketches from an assignment where we are meant to catch the feeling of EXHAUSTION...

And this is the final Maya pose...

 ......'til next time..... so long.

From one coffee addict to another

I don't smoke, I drink only occasionally and I don't ever touch drugs. If you don't count caffeine, that is. :)

This little animation, by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou, based on a song by the French band Oldelaf and Mr D, describes very clearly what my day is like. It's a caffeine fueled crescendo. :)

Progress reel so far from class 1

These are some examples of what we have been up to so far in class 1 of animation mentor. There are a lot of bouncing balls here, as we are learning the fundamental principals of animation. SO... better keep it simple, stupid!  The "real" characters are coming up in a half year or so...  :-)

Nice to do life drawing when you have a talented model

Here are some more sketches from the life drawing class I'm taking outside the AM curriculum. I stick to charcoal pen, trying to concentrate on body shape, line of action, proportions...  But when I look around me among my classmates, who are pretty much more advanced than me and work in all kinds of different techniques and materials, I really feel like a hopless beginner.  :-)
They are sooo talented, some of them! I hope I will develop some kind of drawing skill too, eventually.

The process behind Freakish kid's awesome "cluckie the vampire chicken"

When I started out playing around with animation as a hobby some years ago it was absolutely 2D that interested me most. And since I'm not a very good drawing artist - can't keep volume from drawing to drawing ! - I soon found 2D CG animation to be the most suitable way to go for me. I have been using a software called Anime Studio Pro (former known as 'Moho') and found it to be quite nice app, at an affordable price too. It's kind of pity that so few professionals use it... If you look it up on youtube you mostly find amateur's clips... which aren't too convincing.

But there are exceptions!

This is a good example of good use of the software AND a visual style that I like, "Cluckie the vampire chicken" by Freakish Kid:



There are clips in better resolution at Freakish kid's site. I highly recommend you go there and watch them instead!

And when you have watched the clip go here and read the story behind the production! Very interesting, I promise!

I first became aquainted with the work of this studio when I was browsing the forum for users of "Anime studio Pro".  (BTW, don't let the name fool you, it's not just for anime, it's good for all kind of styles.  It's a nice 2D / CG vectorbased animation system with bonerigged models, FK and IK, which makes it a kind of tool somewhere in between traditional 2D and 3D CG apps. A little lacking on the pipeline bells & whistles, more suitable for small studios).

Freakish kid (former "greykid") is one of the best examples of good, professional use of this piece of software that I know of.  They are based in London, UK and in Hungary and I know that they have produced a lot of stuff for Nickelodeon.

Take a peek into animationland

Got the tip about this youtube clip from a friend's blog. I just had to put it up here too, for all you people who DON'T know what CG animation is about. Take a seat in the customer's chair and go for a ride to animationland.....

Some nice tutorials from Randolf Dimalanta

Woohoo, class 1 of Animation Mentor has just begun, and I'm stunned to see how many really amazingly good artist's there are among the students. I really, really have to develop my drawing skills! :)

So, beside the standard curriculum of AM, I will continue trying to get some extra life drawing exercise.

Here are some good tutorials I found from Randolf Dimalanta's site. Good for a noob like me to watch.


Lifedrawing Demonstration: "The Gesture" from Randolf Dimalanta on Vimeo.

And if you click on this picture to the right you'll be directed to another nice life drawing tutorial at his site. 
There are some Maya stuff there too, so if you are interested in that go to the site and check them out. Have fun!
.

a weird thing...

I just went to the first life drawing class of my entire life yesterday. I have never been to one of those occasions before. It wasn't uncomfortable or embarrassing - it was nice. And I even ran into an old friend there.
But still it was somehow weird! Maybe you get used to it after a little while, but there is just something odd about the whole situation; 10 or 15 people flock together in a room, most seem aquainted and the the friendly small talk is on, people socialize normally, nothing strange is going on. Then suddenly one person takes off his clothes and gets up on this podium - completely naked.

I mean... that doesn't happen very often in everyday life  :-)

the secret of Kells - pencil tests

...and speaking of the secret of Kells, here are some pencil tests uploaded to youtube by Alessandra Sorrentino who was an animator on the project.



For all of you who don't know about penciltestdepot.com yet; that's where I found this clip. Go and check that place out - it's full of interesting stuff!

The secret of Kells

I had not seen or heard about "the secret of Kells" until the academy award nomination for best animated feature some time ago. Last night I had my first chance to see it in full length - and it was a really mindblowing experience. The artwork is so beautifully done. And the mythological story is so magic and captivating. A beautiful story about the power of the imagination in hard times.

Here is a little sample. But I really do recommend you to do whatever you can to get a chance to see the whole thing. Don't miss it!



And if you want to know a little more "behind the scenes"-stuff you can read this AWN article here, where Karl Cohen talks with director Tomm Moore, exploring both the historical and thematic origins of the film. Very interesting!
.

This is where the "humble" part begins.

Class 1 starts this monday. I just found out that my mentor for the following 12 weeks will be Eric Lessard - animator / senior and supervising animator at incredible stuff like all the Shrek movies, Antz, Halo3, Madagasqar 1 & 2 (oh, I love them!), Sarila, The lion of Judah - and more.

This is Eric talking about 'the lion of Judah' by Animated family films. Check out the trailer at their site. link to imdb here.




And here is the link to the trailer of "Sarila", where Eric is animation supervisor. This one is still in production I think? Anyway, looks really interesting!
Directed By Nancy Savard and coproduced by Carpediem Film & TV inc., 10th Ave Productions inc., Shax Animation France and Los Hijos de su Madre.


And let's stop here for a moment now and think: Here I am, little me, nervous newbie and excited freshman standing at the gates to the art of animation... and I, little me, get the honour of having a guy like this as my teacher and mentor!
- Woah, it's just crazy, man!

This kind of thing makes you feel really humble. :-)
.

Thank you, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland

A big applause and a heartfelt, warm THANK YOU to the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, for supporting my studies at Animation mentor!

Some pictures from my regular job directing children...

I just wanted to share some pictures with you to show you were I come from, professionally speaking...
These are some photos from the most recent tv-show I have worked on, "BUUS-fredag", it's a kid's magazine about fantasies, dreams, play and stories... The kid's in the show tell their stories and then these stories are acted out in small live action segments. The show is scripted, but the kids have a lot of influence on the content, which is an important point, really. It makes the show come alive..

"Directing a scene... Granny doesn't hear too well anymore. Her grandchildren have already tried to get her to notice them by shouting and waving - witn no success. Now they will try to get her attention making their balloons explode in her face."

"Sometime's you have to double as an actor too. This businessman has had some financial problems lately and has been forced to live in a box for the last two weeks. The dog in the foreground is about to lift his leg and pee on him."

"This is a love scene... the girl on the bench would like to approach the boy in the blue and green shirt and talk to him - but she's shy... :-)"
 
If you are browsing from somewhere in Finland you can watch the latest episodes of the show at http://areena.yle.fi/   , look for "BUUS-fredag" or "BUUklubben". But I'm sorry to say that the videofeed isn't available abroad. Sorry, guys.



Now I'm off on a long vacation to study at Animation Mentor. No television work for 18 months. It's really a shameless luxury I have here, to be able to study full time - and I am going to enjoy it to the fullest.

And it's nice to know that the tv-show is in very good hands with all my trusted and super capable co-workers. I'm so excited to see how they continue developing the show in my abscence. It's going to be great! :-)

Sketches, sketches...

One week to go before start of class 1 in the core program of Animation mentor. Yipee! Can't wait!

Meanwhile, here are some more sketches for you...

and even more drawings...

I had a really enjoyable day today. I have been drawing all day, which is fun in itself - but it got even better because while drawing I listened to a webinar from Jason Ryan's site with storyboard artist Robb Pratt.
Very interesting interview! I recommend it. (It's long, over 2 hours, but it's reaally worth tuning into!)

Here's the link to Jason Ryan's site, thanks, Ryan for putting this one out there!
http://www.jrawebinar.com/Robb_webinars/interview/

And here are some of the drawings I did while listening:

Books: Mattesi; Force - the key to capturing life through drawing

I am reading this book now, highly recommended by many people who went through animationmentor before me. Between each chapter I sit down and draw, draw, draw. Mattesi's book is very inspiring and the illustrations in it are absolutely beautiful. But I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding the main concept of "force". Lots of arrows and arcs everywhere... 

- Oh well, maybe I'm not just smart enough. :-)

OR then I am going to have a big moment someday soon when I finally get it.

Until then I keep drawing.

Here is a new sketch... (trying to incorporate some 4-point perspective into it)

maya springboard is over - now; life drawing and some reading

So, the Maya springboard workshop has come to an end. I learned a lot, met a lot of nice fellow students, got over the worst fears of getting into 3D and I am now really looking forward to march 29th when class 1 of the core program starts. And now I have two weeks time to prepare. What shall I do?

LIFE DRAWING
I am definitely going to give some serious time to more life drawing exercises. I found a local course meant for amateurs like me :)    Just around 20 euros but with access to live models. What a deal! Sadly this course doesn't begin until april, so I have to wait for it.  (Jeez...!  I would like to start NOW!)
Meantime I'll sit at my desk or at some local cafe and draw, I will check out some literature and anatomy books and maybe experiment with some different materials. I like to draw, I think I have a little talent for it, but I have never developed any skills, never been to any art school or anything like that. Still have to get those "one thousand bad drawings" out of my system... Now I have my chance to really do something about it! And I think I'm going to have lots of fun diving into it.

Here is an inspiring site I found the other day when I was googling around looking for inspiration. Go and have look yourself at Mark McDonnells blog site at http://markmcdonnell.blogspot.com/







So I will devote some time to life drawing. Secondly; I will read some books about animation production in general:


ANIMATION PRODUCTION

Part of my aim with my time at AnimtaionMentor - besides the obvious; to become the best animator I can be - is to learn as much as possible about the animation industry in general and especially about the producing side of the business.
This book I recently aquired from amazon.com

Winder/Downlatabadi; producing animation.

I have just turned a couple of pages in it and it definitely looks very interesting. Exactly what I need to get a clearer picture of the production systems of the larger animation industry. I come from live action television myself and I am more used to rather small production units, so I need this. :)

link to amazon.com; producing animation

Slapstick on one leg

Another animation mentor exercise. We were supposed make the onelegger take one step. Only that.
Well, of course I couldn't resist...

Some more exercise drawings, full body and sleep poses

Some sleep poses, drawn from photos...

 

And some full body poses drawn from head...

More life drawing exercises...