Just a quick general impression of the three-volume Character Animation series from the Gnomon Workshop. I recieved these three DVDs as a Christmas gift this year and, I gotta say it, I’m pretty disappointed. Instructor Cameron Hood’s credentials are beyond reproach but his teaching style as well as his general lesson plan strikes me as flawed. I’ve watched volumes one and two so far and all I really have a sense of at this point in time is how Cameron Hood animates in Maya. This isn’t an all-together bad thing (seeing other people’s workflow is always interesting to me) but I’m not sure it’s worth 60$ a pop. Hood talks very little about principles and spends most of his time setting keys and editing them in the graph editor. This is not only tedious, it’s not very helpful. Just when you think he’s about to pass down a true nugget of info, he glosses over it and moves on. (An example being Hood’s frequent referencing of “What leads what”. I’d have to go back through but I’m almost certain that he never stops to talk about what he means by this).
Expect an update (and a full review) after I’ve watched volume three but, pound for pound, I think Jeff Lew’s 3D Character Animation is a better buy.
The name “Jeremy Birn” suddenly popped into my head. I remember seeing (and being impressed by) his work back in the mid to late 90s. I was curious what he was up to. His website is still there after all of these years and it turns out he’s lighting at Pixar.
On his site he has a top ten list for landing a job in the Computer Graphics industry. It’s simple, direct and (it seems to me) right on the money.
Okay, no more blogs today. Today we have two sites from longstanding commentators and authors on animation history and culture, Jerry Beck and Michael Barrier.
Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Brew site is an excellent source of news on classical animation as well as the field in general. It’s a good catch-all. Mr. Beck’s books are quite terrific. In particular his guide to the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies is indispensable.
Michael Barrier’s Site features essays and reviews on the latest releases and also on cartoon history. I was struck in particular by his essay comparing The Incrediblesand Shark Tale. While I don’t agree with him across the board, I think he makes many astute and well-reasoned points. In particular (and on a semi-unrelated note) I liked this quote from an interview Barrier did with Ward Kimball:
“Animation is very slow. When you’re an actor, you depend on spontaneity in a scene, and it’s hard to work up spontaneity when you’re doing separate drawings … The faster you can work, the more spontaneity, and that was one of the secrets of the early [Norman] Ferguson animation drawing. He could draw almost as fast as he could think.”
In many ways, this touches on my own feelings about animation. I often feel that my fastest work is some of my best.
Anyways, I’m adding these guys to the links at the right.
Here’s a sample of Ward Kimball’s Work:
And here’s a three part series about Kimball from “The Disney Family Album”:
I’m currently working a fulltime job and trying to get some animation together. This is pretty tough as I’m sure you can imagine/relate to. Things have been busy around the office as the holiday break approaches and, when I get home in the evening I want to do one of two things –fall into a coma or blow off a little steam with some videogame action. Needless to say, this isn’t conducive to producing an animation reel. With that in mind last night I bought a kitchen timer. I put this timer on my desk and I now will not allow myself to get up from animating until the little bell goes off. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Rather like trying to train a puppy. But, hey, when your mind is wandering and all you can think about is World of Warcraftyou gotta do what you gotta do.
I dig this guy’s blog despite the fact that there aren’t very many entries yet. It’s got a little bit of everything: his musings on animation, his illustrations and also some freaky little short stories.
I felt like it was a good idea to give the other side of the coin to my recent fit of pique. In my last “Joys’” post I complained about what I called “software snarl” –fighting the tools to get the results I wanted. Maybe I was just having a bad day but I really haven’t run into the dreaded S.S. since that time. I guess it’s just the ebb and flow of karma. The truth is I’ve enjoyed the animating I’ve done since that entry quite a lot. Really my only hang-up has been trying to get a portfolio together whilst simultaneously working a full-time (and unfortunately non-animation related) job.
But that’s a whole other can of worms.
I hope to get some more work-in-progess stuff posted as soon as possible. While I haven’t exactly morphed into Glen Keane overnight I do feel like I’m making some progress.
Here’s another animator’s blog I’m adding to my list. This time it’s Justin Barrett from the great state of Texas. Apparently Mr. Barrett is a contemporary of Keith Lango. –Anyways, his blog is a good, no-nonsense read. Check him out…
I was lucky enough to get into an advance screening of Peter Jackson’s King Konglast night. Well, I say “lucky”… The truth is that you never get a good seat at these things and they treat you more like cattle than people so part of me says I would have been better off waiting a week and seeing it under better circumstances. But all of that not withstanding, how is the movie? Well, it’s really good, actually. Good with a couple of asterixes. My take on it was much the same as my take on Jackson’s Lord of the Ringsmovies: the overall experience is terrific but some of the parts are wonky. “Kong” is too long and there are definitely some things in it that don’t work. On the other hand, most of the performances are quite good and there are definitely a few scenes that pack a terrific emotional wallop.
King Kong is a loving homage to the 1933 original. Jackson has talked extensively about how the original “Kong” inspired him to become a filmmaker when he was 9. A lot of that love shows through here. We’re given the same basic story with many of the same action set pieces but with everything amped-up via our modern effects technology and filmic sensibilities. It’s the original on steroids (to invoke an oft-used cliche). But perhaps that sounds dismissive. Peter Jackson gives us here much better performances than the original could ever have. Most of the illusion of Kong rests with Naomi Watts since she’s essentially acting to nothing (or at least nothing but Andy Serkis in a funny ape suit). Watts is terrific in the film and so is Kong for that matter. The illusion is a strong one. You buy their relationship and you buy Kong as a character.
Overall, a very strong thumbs-up –just try not to mind the warts.
(Okay, so it’s not the movie’s poster but this is a neat book).
King Kong
2005
Peter Jackson –Director
Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Pillipa Boyens –Writers
***1/2 (out of five)
How unfortunate that Home on the Range is very likely the last traditionally animated film Disney will ever produce. Is it a bad movie? Not per se but neither is it a particularly good one. It’s shot through with pop culture references and loud voice acting much like some of the work from the competition. More to the point though, it doesn’t have the heart one used to expect from Disney features (and one now finds almost exclusively in the work of Pixar).
And so Disney feature animation ends a nearly 70 year tradition not with a bang but a whimper.
(On the bright side though I should say that the film looks terrific. I thought most of the character design was outstanding and the backgrounds were absolutely terrific).
Home on the Range
2004
Will Finn and John Sanford –Writer/Directors
**1/2 (out of five)
I like this book. It’s a couple of years old but it does a clean, concise job of explaining a good character animation workflow and it’s interviews with various industry professionals are uniformly interesting. If I had a complaint at all, it would be with the latter couple of chapters wherein the author explains his process on a couple of shots from a short film. The problem with this is that the book does not include a CD-ROM so there are no Quicktime files with which to follow along –pretty much everything he is saying ends up being academic because you can’t see the animation in question.
Still, I have no reservations at all in recommending this book to anyone who is an aspiring digital animator. Good stuff.
Inspired 3D Character Animation
Kyle Clark –Author
**** (out of five)
A while back I read this article over on Seward Street about watching more animation –sort of immersing yourself in Cartoon Culture if you will. Now, the truth is, you don’t have to twist my arm to watch more cartoons but here lately I’ve been making a conscious effort. Some of the feature stuff I’ve been watching you can see reviewed below but I’ve also been watching as much stuff on Cartoon Network and Boomerang as I can make time for. On some level, I’ve enjoyed every frame of what I’ve seen recently. For instance, I watched an old Laserdisc of Tex Avery cartoons and thought some of them were brilliantly funny. The thing that’s made the biggest impression on me recently however was an old episode of “Toonheads” on Boomerang. The show was titled “The Dreams of Bob Clampett” and it was nothing but old Clampett Warner cartoons featuring dream sequences. This of course included gems like “The Big Snooze” and “The Great Piggybank Robbery”. Not only are these shorts very, very funny they also have a loose rubbery style that grabs the eye and holds it. I was just grinning from ear-to-ear during the whole show. What’s more I found myself wanting to sit down and try and animate something with that same sort of feel. The thing about these cartoons was that you didn’t look at them and say “My, what a fine example of the 12 Principles of Animation!”. In fact, they were a little on the sloppy side. Nevertheless, there was such a feeling of life and zany energy that you couldn’t look away. I took this as a sort of an object lesson. In the past, I think I’ve been too preoccupied with the technical aspects of an animation and have ended up producing work that was lacking in zing. Style and technique have to meet somewhere in the middle to create animation that really breathes.
Here’s a couple of good links for those interested in learning more about the awesome Robert Clampett (who was a huge influence on Ren and Stimpy’s John K. amongst others)…
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