The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
Despite all the great online animation trainings available those days, I feel there is still space for a more individual approach to the animation education in order to answer the specific needs of students or junior animators so I decided to resurrect the “Pick My Brain” mentoring program with the help of several “new brains”.
Go check out the newly redesigned website, it is shaping up nicely.
Pick my brain with a moustache
Animation rigs normally offer two options when animating eyes: “world space” or “local space”.
“World space” allows you to lock the eyes in a specific world location, and pose your character without having to worry about the correct eyes direction. That kind of space sounds ideal when animating a two character shot as the aim of the eyes will not move.
Instead, “Local eyes” allows you to lock the eyes in relation to the head so when rotating the head, the eyes will automatically follow the head movement which sounds … pretty useless and unrealistic doesn’t it?
Throughout Animation Mentor, I was a “world space eyes” animator. I didn’t understand why anyone would use Local Space but during a Q&A, AM superstar graduate Mike Stern who had already landed a job at Dreamworks, planted a seed in my brain when he mentioned he was using Local Eyes rather than World and from that day on, I knew I would need to get more experience with Local Eyes and see what advantage this method would bring.
Having worked in games mostly in my early career, I never really got a chance to do much acting, let alone testing eyes parent spacing. Going into TV series and taking part in AnimSquad finally allowed me the opportunity to get more familiar with the two methods and I would now mostly animate eyes in Local Space.
“World Space” allows you to accurately lock the eyes in a specific direction which seems great at first but the eyes often end up looking totally disconnected from the head and requiring just as much finessing than Local Eyes.
People might get angry at me as this is not what is normally done in education but sometime ago I had found a great example of unsuccessful eyes animation that clearly showed the use of World Space Eyes instead of Local Eyes and it is time to bring the example back!
Don’t worry I have already told the animator about it and hopefully he will take my comments in consideration in his next pass.
The shot I am referring to is the first one and specifically what is being done on Bishop.
Using this method, the eyes are perfectly locked in space but since they are not reacting to the motion of the head, they seem to be floating around the orbital cavity and totally disconnected from the head which looks very odd and inorganic.
Now that I have more experience with acting and having had Malcon Pierce insisting on eyes focus for literally HOURS during an Animsquad expert workshop, I have fully grasped the necessity to lock the eyes firmly on the head rather than on the environment.
Eyes direction in relation to the head and eyelids is the ultimate component of acting after all. Aside from the exception of blinks, even though I will talk about this an other time, a slight variation in the position of the eyes will convey a totally different emotion so you want to keep a tight grip over the positioning of the pupil and iris.
I hope this article was useful to you and I will leave you with a little something to test your … eyes 😉
This is a shot I animated some time ago. Do you think I animated Bishop’s eyes in Local space or World space? People with experience will have no trouble spotting the space used but see for yourself!
Related posts:
Cartoony eyes, how to
So you want to be a rigger huh! version 02
Few years ago, finishing Animation Mentor meant making short films! What better way to show your individuality than making your own shortfilm. To me, an animator’s goal should be to make short films rather than just making shots. Andrew Gordon expressed a similar feeling in a 2008 Splinedoctors’ blog post.
Here is a great shorfilm by abAutorig maker and animator, Brendan Ross, aka “Supercrumbly”.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/25147749[/vimeo]
Related posts:
abAutorig, Pyro tutorial Part 1
abAutorig, 5 minutes overview
Well it’s out! Some really really nice work from my fellow graduates and ex coworkers.
http://www.animationmentor.com/showcase2010/
Some of them have already landed top animation jobs and others will very soon.
And while we are at it, let me introduce you Bishop 2.0, the latest version of my favourite Animation Mentor rig. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet but this looks very promising and I have to mention that my friend the awesome Keith Ribbons helped out with the facial rigging.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WT7_F5wsQk[/youtube]
Related post:
Dan Carey “Shower Power” short film
The UK animation industry is being taken over by Animation Mentor. I don’t have exact figures but I have the feeling that 3 out of 5 animation graduates hired in UK come from Animation Mentor. In few years, 50% of the animator in the industry will probably come from the online animation school.
Why is that?
Animation Mentor has been offering the industry, the exact kind of profiles it was looking for.
In 18 month, they create more job opportunities to graduates than what traditional education would provide in 4/5 years.
In UK it is usual for students to do a foundation course, followed by their 3 years degree. The problem is that very often, after a fruitless job search due to their poor showreel, those graduates end up going back to university since they can’t find any stable jobs.
Where it gets even worse is that after those different degrees and post graduate diplomas, they often end up as interns or runners at 13k a year when Animation Mentor students directly snap Junior animation or even Animator position. I have also seen loads of those graduates eventually going to Animation Mentor for 2 more years of education and even bigger student loans to repay but finally getting better chances to break into the industry.
Now Animation Mentor is not the only new form of schooling taking over traditional education. Escape has also been providing (at a very high cost) the kind of employees Soho VFX house are looking for but I just found some other US schools providing alternative training.
Gnomon has been in business for years in California and offer great training if you are into monsters and SciFi, admittedly I am not.
Future Poly. A school aimed at the video game industry in the Seattle area.
Concept Design academy in Pasadena. http://conceptdesignacad.blogspot.com/
I won’t go in length trying to understand why those courses are so successful but one thing we can notice rightaway is that the mentors/lecturers/teachers are all professionals still very active in the industry and even online.
Rad Sechrist http://radhowto.blogspot.com/
Joe Pikop http://vimeo.com/somuchmonsters
Jean-Denis Haas http://spungellaonsite.blogspot.com/
On an other hand, traditional education is still regarded as one of the best form of schooling in Europe, when talking about 2 french animation schools, Supinfocom and Gobelins and it is not rare to bump into those graduates in Soho, not rare at all. Most VFX houses actually go to the graduation ceremony of those two schools to snap the best talents.
[update] Having worked with several graduates from animation schools and university, I came to realise that a lot of them didn’t have a clear idea about what they wanted to specialise in when they joined their school and felt a generalist school was less risky. Also, traditional schools diplomas are recognised by Immigration laws and can help to get Visa to work abroad.
Related posts:
Is Animation Mentor expensive?
Chineese AM
AM expensive? Try the Chinese branch!
http://edu.hxsd.com/videos-10-220.html
The 8 minutes Chinese flavoured AM showreel should convince you how good the teaching is!
More seriously, except the serious copyright infringements, having worked with several Chinese outsourcing companies, I have come to realize that when it comes to learning animation, copying the masters can pay off. Cutural differences aside, some chineese animators are actually really good.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6857488[/vimeo]
Moving forward, this is 1 hour of work in 5 minutes. I used Camtasia this time so the result should be a bit smoother. Unfortunately Camtasia pause button didn’t work so 2 hours are missing, you won’t see the entire panel detailing sequence and few other things. Sorry.
[…] (more…)
shot12_v02
Well that’s it for now. Here is the final pass for that shot. The long chair will still be tweaked later (the design is still WIP) but I am now moving to the next shot. Hope you like it. Shoot any comments
[update May 2013]
This post seems to have attracted some attention lately so I feel I need to to make an update.
I graduated from Animation Mentor in 2008 and haven’t had much contact with the school or the current AM community for a very long time so take this article with a pinch of salt. I haven’t caught up with the recent changes at AM, well I have but I just couldn’t understand the new syllabus (actually it is not that hard http://www.animationmentor.com/animation-program/animation-basics/ they just made things appear more complicated when they announced the AMP pipeline).
Back in my days, AM was a great foundation course from which a lot of people went on to get feature animation jobs and build an incredible network of professional animators friends. This probably still applies in 2013.
If you already have plenty of animation experience though, I might direct you to other online or on-site animation schools like Animation Collaborative, AnimSquad, Ianimate and AnimSchool since those are only taught by senior feature animators and even supervising animators from top studios.
The way things are going, if you don’t go to one of those recent “polishing schools”, I don’t thing you will be able to break into feature animation nowadays.
AM logo
People around me know that AM has been for me a love and hate relationship all along and unlike some other students I didn’t get caught in the “everything is awesome” bubble that wraps most people as soon as they join AM.
I did my fair bit of bashing in the past and nearly gave up in the middle of Class 5 but like fine wine, the school is gradually getting better and better and that’s amazing for a school who has been in business for only few years. Today I wanted to share a comment I posted on the Splinedoctors blog since I have more audience here than they will ever have. Just kidding.
Is Animation Mentor expensive?.
Well that s an interesting question that deserves to be answered.
I would be tempted to say yes but looking around, how many cheaper options do you get if you are not french, already ultra talented and selected by Les Gobelins animation school?
What else do you get for those $15,000 and ultimately, how long would it take you to pay back that money if you got this animation dream job?
Personally that money was my savings to pay the deposit for a mortgage but since I was working while doing AM I could have quickly recovered the cost of AM with my new animation job. Now I live in UK, I have no clue if this applies to other countries, the dollar is at it lowest level since 1982 I am told.
After 18 month at AM and without any animation experience previously, the students who reached the upper classes, apply for jobs where we are in competition with people who had been through 4 to 5 years of university!
Foundation course: 1 year
BA: 3 years
Some guys who applied for the same job I was applying for even had Masters or Post graduate diplomas!
Does one realise how much it cost to spend 4 years at university? Think about the tuition, the housing…. Let alone the fact that most people can’t move city and have to do AM on top of a full time job.
Now don’t get over excited 😉 This doesn’t mean that you just need to pay your $15,000 AM tuition to get a job. Your mentors won’t animate the shots for you and you will still have to work realllllly hard to polish this Showreel that will get you where you always wanted to be!
Animation is hard, no matter how much you paid or what school you went to but AM gives you access to a crazy community of people who love and live for animation and if you make the most of it, you will definitely reap the rewards of it.
Animation Mentor might seem expensive at first glance, but it is not.
[update] at the moment, the Short film has been removed from the program. I am completely against the idea and I just hope they bring it back very quickly.
