Living With Animation

Life goes on

2010-02-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I've posted here. I am no longer teaching at ITT... there were a lot of great memories and there's a lot to be missed... but I've not sat idle since parting ways. One of the things I have wanted to do was improve my skills with digital painting and illustration. I never received traditional training in this regard, so taking part in a group called Crimson Daggers has sufficed nicely. We can be found there at www.crimsondaggers.com with links to everything.

During this I've been doing studies on anatomy, painting from portraits/photos, studying the work of old masters, etc. Here's a link to my photobucket album with most of the studies for that.

http://s26.photobucket.com/albums/c129/mantisazure/CrimsonDaggers/

Another thing I've wanted to do is back up my animation skills to start from the top..or bottom... or beginning... whatever you want to call it. At any rate I am learning traditional animation by way of various kits, dvds, sites, books, etc. Some of that can be seen in the aforementioned Crimson Daggers blog.

I am officially looking for work, including freelance so I'll probably be uploading some of my 3d and various other images into this blog.

Enjoy the album and pop in to the Daggers stream to say hi some time.

Demo Reel 9-9-09

2009-09-09T08:18:00.001-07:00

Well, here's my most recent demo reel.. It has a lot of 2-legged characters and very short shots because of the amount of it that was done as studies. I'm developing shots with more complex characters and a bit more depth. Enjoy!

Animation Tips #1

2009-09-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Here I've uploaded a clip that I've been working on. Normally I wouldn't show something this rough but this part of the process is very important for those who are learning animation.

What is this? It was originally going to be what is called a pencil test. A pencil test is a rough series of sketches to get a basic idea for animation (motion, timing, etc). I would take this pencil test then and either clean it up (which is what I'm doing) or take it into 3d and use it for a loose reference for my character posing.

I decided to clean this up and turn it into a full 2d animated piece, and this is part of that process. Normally, I would draw just the story-telling drawings, then the "key" drawings (the ones that are important to movement and timing). This would be all that is necessary for a pencil test, but I'm not just doing that anymore. I made the decision though to clean up the key drawings before doing the in-betweens (all of the little detail drawings that smooth out the animation).

In this part of the process I noticed a few problems.
1. The gag where he stretches and snaps his back is weak... it really needs to go... This detracts from the character and the main action of the shot because it diminishes clarity and creates a duality of his character type.

2. There are a few key drawings missing... without them.. the animation seems to go from the leg stretch into the squatting stretch and then stand and launch into the butterfly kick... there should be keys for holds in there... (a hold is where the character stays in the same position for a bit)

3. There are some in-betweens already in there (this is a problem because it makes re-timing a pain in the ass).

4. I am working in a really small resolution... this wouldn't be an issue except it is so small that a 1pixel pencil tool is big... which means that cleaning my lines is very tedious.

The first lesson? Pay attention to what you're doing... keep your ideas simple (simple means clear!)... don't try to take shortcuts (the small resolution).

Construction Exercise pt2

2009-08-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Woke up, fed the dog and started away on some more construction exercises. This time I dug through the kid's toys and found a dinosaur toy from the land before time. Got working on that and managed a front side and 3/4 view from construction.

For the Bowler Hat Guy, I had used Autodesk's Sketchbook...for this one I used GIMP. I think I like gimp a little better but I can't figure out how to get the eraser to bind to the stylus :/
That and I realized at the end that I had been using GIMP's paintbrush to sketch rather than the pencil....

Oh... for those who aren't aware... this is a study of the style of drawing known as Construction (duh) and it's used by many 2d animators as a way of templating characters. It's different from traditional sketching in that you have to train yourself to build the object from circles and other basic geometric shapes while following guide/proportion/negative space. See JohnK's site in my links to the left for more info.

Construction Exercise 1

2009-08-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

Well, the third post in 1 day after such a long break...
I took a swing at doing a construction study of a toy as per JohnK's suggestion.
I present: "Unintentionally creepy looking Bowler Hat Guy from Pez Dispenser"

I'm not really happy with the results but this guy is alot trickier than I originally thought. I'm really having a hard time figuring out where the origin sphere "should" be in all of this and trying to line up to the center line... The only thing I can guess that starts off of the center line is the cheeks, as everything else seems to sit a little higher on the face.

I was going to do another angle on this but after drawing pictures of high-tech mice all day my hand is killing me.

Anime Studio

2009-08-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Rarwarg... just thought I'd drop a quick post about the frustration I'm having with this program... I've worked with Flash, Pencil, Toonboom, and Flipbook among other software packages.... I opened up this program and was ready to do some JohnK exercises using my Wacom tablet... call me crazy but the normal tools for lightbox/onion skinning are not there and when you set a key it's almost like the only thing they expect you to do is move portions of your previous lines or shapes made with bones around... aka... cutout animation... I was pretty excited about this software because I can see bones being useful and it was only $50... but frankly I can't figure out why they would give you that option but not the option to hand draw your keyframes...

That or my excitement for the JohnK lessons destroyed all 6 of my remaining brain cells... I'm moving my tablet to my desktop so I can do the exercises in Flipbook :(

Been busy

2009-08-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well, to anyone that reads this site on a normal basis... okay... that's probably all of ..me...since it's my homepage... but at any rate it's been a while since an update.

So... the first thing's first... since the last post where I was bashing Fatkat... they've gone under and re-formed. I feel pretty bad about this but at the same time I'm pretty fed up with cutout animation... I'm not going to beat that drum anymore but I felt it was worth mentioning.

I had to leave Animation Mentor... namely for two reasons...
1. It is more expensive than I can afford right now.
2. I am determined that I want to become more involved with 2d animation, which they do not offer.

In keeping with that, I've created a curriculum for myself that is essentially geared towards helping me acquire the skills I need to successfully do this. Chiefly, I'll be leaning on the great products that are out there from Gnomon workshop, Wowio books, my library of drawing and animation books (including the Illusion of Life and The Animator's Survival Kit, and JohnK's online training.

The first thing I think I'll be doing is going back to the basics. I never attended formal art school on drawing. I've picked up the basics along the way and can form shapes that are recognizable as what they are...but there are finer points I missed along the way. The first "semester" I've set myself to the basics of drawing. This will range from technique to concepts and will cover construction primarily. Perspective and more specifics (such as mechanical, cloth, and figure drawing) will be approached later on...but for now I'm keeping it simple.

Pencil Test pt2

2009-04-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Put a bit more work into the pencil test and am about to start the blocking in Maya. I'll knock up a mock set prior to this for spacing, the actual set will be done after the model's motion has gone to spline. Term 2 at AM is rocking hard and I'm already getting itchy to jump back in on demo reel and ad work... that'll have to wait though.. I've got to put 300% into the AM studies if I want to learn all I can.

Here's the movie :) Note: I'm aware of the mistake right after he leaves the ground... I can't spend anymore time line-testing though...it'll be dealt with in Maya.

In other news... I was on JohnK's site... he has an article about the lack of animation in the animation industry... I agree with it whole-heartedly... soon after, I saw something on Fatkat's site that mashed that exact same button. There have been some good things from that studio... but in some ways I see them and others like them in the same boat... promoting the death of 2d. By that I mean that 2d is charming in it's subtlety, it's gags, it's low-tech and crude nature, it's beauty, or any of the other earmarks that are unique to each director/artist/team. Flash can be these things..but more often than not it is crappy. I've seen even line-weight, bad use of segmented characters, god-awful shading/coloring, and I don't know how many mouth animations that appear to be direct output from either Papagayo or Magpie, or whatever... If 2d is to thrive, it NEEDS the charm and character that made it worth watching...even limited animation when hand-drawn was better than the garbage pumped through the cables.

Thanks for reading.

Pencil Test Madness

2009-04-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Second Term at AM... it gets better and better...anyway... here's a pencil test! He'll eventually be 3d.

Animation Mentor ROCKS!

2009-01-15T15:42:00.000-08:00

I am in Week 2 of Animation Mentor and it ROCKS HARD!!! The community is great and the instructors are awesome (seriously...you have no idea). If you like animation you might be happy...if you love animation then you'll be in Heaven.

Here's a sketch of my mentor (hehe...sorry if it's a bad drawing Anthony :P )

I had a thought today about action and reaction animation... This isn't based on anything other than simple observation...but...here goes..

Actions:
Thoughts, followed by eye movement (followed by head), followed by body movement, followed by eyes, followed by thought. This leads into the next action.
Nothing major there...but I noticed that people tend to spend more time on certain parts of that process depending on how comfortable they are or how well they know what they're doing. How they do each step should determine acting choices. Importance of one part should help determine strength/emphasis of the pose! This is terribly formulaic but I think it would help to tell if a performance reads well. I also hate conformity and this sort of work methodology breeds just that. So use with caution... or at least adapt it for your own purposes.

Reactions:
Very similar...except
Observation or realization (possibly being acted upon), followed by action, followed by thought. This is probably not as easy to stuff into a formula, since you would want to have the option to show the character being stunned. For example... they notice their lover with another person... the observation happens..then the thought? Or does their jaw dropping open count as an action? See...it's not as cut and dry.. Though you could probably argue the same for actions...saying that blinking or a secondary action counts as an action...

Wow...deep stuff once you scratch the surface :) I'll get my diving suit!

Huge Update

2009-01-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

Well, the holidays are over :)
There's alot of great things that have come from this Holiday season that I want to share.

The first thing that was great was being able to spend tons of time with my family. With work and school etc, this is something that we don't get alot of.

My wife and I have come to a huge conclusion/resolution about the space we live in. It's funny because it deals with the title of this blog in a roundabout way. Most people associate "living with" something with negative connotations. This has been the case with our house/furniture up until now. But if you look at that phrase differently.. for instance, birds living with squirrels in a forest... This implies that these things are natural together... they belong.

We were at one of the local malls and happened into a store called "Cool and Eclectic". I hate to plug places, but the furniture was so unique that it triggered one of those thought processes that leads to something larger than just a single thought. It was great because Maria and I both hit it at the same time. The epiphany went something like this... most furniture and architecture now days is essentially a box. There are variations of this but it's basically "the easy way" and worse... it only comes in a few earthy tones or black...

Okay...call me a curmudgeon but if you live in a boring brown box, surrounded by boring brown, grey, and black boxes... you have a tendency to get locked into that mode. It's worse if you have any amount of clutter..then you have boring boxes and random chaos! Soooo.... long story short, we've began re-decorating :) When all is said and done our house will be our home... a statement of who we are. A guy who's nuts about art and animation and a woman from a rich culture that celebrates life and music and art with vibrant colors and patterns.

In other news!

A guy named Shawn came over and he basically is responsible for my lightbox being able to be completed. I'm not talking about him helping with the cutting... He has great woodworking knowledge and he graciously shared it with me. This added a great deal of quality to the lightbox and helped me understand how to finish it off.

Since then, I've learned that lightboxes in general aren't quite as significant as actual discs. I've also found all sorts of sites where you can get this stuff for reasonable prices. I guess the real purpose was to build something I could use to create 2d animation.. and yes I've done that. Learning that the ideal tool was slightly different...yeah that's frustrating...but it's all been a great experience and I'll continue moving forward as best I can while studying.

Observation about animators(students/teachers):

3d animation students now going through the average chain animation school are not getting the basics. The worst part is timing to me. Most of the other concepts you can pick up through natural observation and moderate research... but when there's no way of understanding timing (x-sheets not being explained, frame-time conversion not being mandatory, no 2d understudy, etc). I think the reason for this is the idea that EVERYTHING 2d is old hat and it's best to just do 3d all in your head... no layout/planning, etc. Well..the baby went out with the bathwater... Those "old-hat" concepts, tools, and techniques are incredibly important. I can't think of anything that's totally useless and I've only just started getting into this stuff. Having a BS in an animation-related field of study and 4 years of industry experience I haven't seen hide nor hair of a timing chart, x-sheet, or even proper storyboards for that matter... I'm sure that applying these would help work flow smoother, and hit the mark cleaner and with greater appeal.

Thanks for reading, feel free to comment!

Starting from scratch

2008-12-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

Well, as I prepare for Animation Mentor, I am attempting to unlearn what I have learned over the years and basically get myself back to the principles (in my case ...TO the principles in the first place).

Step 1... build a lightbox!
What!?!? That's right.. I'm sawing and cutting and screwing, and gluing. A giant wooden box with a light in it and a ruled pegbar along... hm... top or bottom!??! Anyway, it's coming along. I'm no carpenter, but it's at least similar to what I had in mind <_<

After it's built I'll be doing some of the stuff from the Preston Blaire book(s). After at least one of them look halfway close to right, I'll move over to digital and start working in Flipbook or Pencil... following the Jason Ryan ramp ups.

This should lead me right in to quarter 1 of Animation Mentor and a full on transition (back) into 3d.

I'm very excited about this and animation in general. While I've always enjoyed animation, I'm actually really starting to "get it" and many things are clicking. Many things in fact that had I never learned them, my animation would never progress past where it is at this very moment. I am also learning/refining my opinion on animation and developing an appreciation that's based on facts rather than basic fanboyism.

1 example... following animation back to Max Fleischer and that era... I noticed something that JohnK rants about all the time.. construction. Knowing that in the first Betty Boop spot, they hadn't really refined ...well anything.. I knew exactly what I was looking at. There were still things that I could appreciate! As terrible as the drawings were, and as imperfect as the animation was (some strobing or bad matches on the cels) the takes were nothing short of brilliant (extremely crazy stuff). 6 months ago I would have just skipped it, simply "forgiving it" as an old animation with very few redeeming qualities.

I also wanted to post a closing comment.

Major thanks to David Artura. He was my mentor during the Maya Springboard class. He was a super cool guy anyone could get along with. My classmates were also really great, Thomas was hillarious, Frank offered alot of encouragment, and Ed was super helpful in helping me transition from Max to Maya. We had a couple of other guys in there that were great fun (Richard and his speakers to mic, sounding like the Daytona Speedway or something). It was a blast, I learned alot, and I can't wait to get into the actual program!

Thanks for reading... more to come :)

One Simple Step

2008-12-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

Arrrr!!! I just spent a literal crapload of time in Maya working on this session's assignment. I was almost to a point that I didn't totally hate it... almost... and silly me.. I went messing with stuff I didn't understand and >bam<... no more file...

Anyway, the assignment was to take a simple step...so I probably deserve what I got for overcomplicating things... but that's just how I am :/

There's more after the clip..

Okay. Now that this is out of the way... I saw something on Blender's new feature called anisculpt. It looked incredibly complicated when I saw the demo clip but cool all the same. Well, today blendernation posted an article on Maya animation export to Blender for Anisculpt tweaking. Freaking Incredible!!!

One of my pet-peeves with 3d is that the wonderful exaggeration and takes and gags from 2d just don't translate well. It's usually the rig or the model or whatever.. BUT using this in the production pipeline brings that flexibility back (literally). The beauty of a cartoon is that the rules of the real world don't apply, and any tool that makes that easier to convey is alright by me :)

It's been a busy day for me! Today I started doing some concept drawings for a pitch for a new animation at work. It got the green light at the initial stages so I've moved into doing basic construction on the characters (pre-vis not 3d modeling). The characters are much more loose and entertaining and hopefully they will go over well with the higher ups.

I also finished modeling props for another segment... good times!

Aha!

2008-12-01T19:43:00.001-08:00

I finally got the constraints figured out. They're not all that hard but with Thanksgiving and all the holiday goodness, time was a little scarce. I was keying an attribute in the actual constraint and I think that caused it to misbehave, or maybe it was key placement... whatever the case, I lost track of the last keys of the can and had to edit the ending to accomidate for that.

Having surfed through some videos of students, I'm pretty stoked to be starting the actual classes.

Thanks for looking, Mike

Grabber Arm Robo Thing

2008-11-28T11:09:00.001-08:00

This is a piece I am working on for a class on constraints and locators. My orignal concept had the arm flying around in the scene ala Jetson's flavor and picking up the cup. This simply wasn't going to happen in 100 frames so I had to rethink my plan. I've cleaned the curves a little and added overlap and followthrough. There's a good deal to be done but this is where I'm at.

Grabber Arm Before Constraints from Mike Lawler on Vimeo.

aaaand...we're live!

2008-11-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

This blog is for tracking my progress as I learn and grow in animation and probably other general stuff too.

I have been trying to draw my whole life and the more I know about it the more I learn. Pretty cliche' right?

Well, I have to admit that I feel somewhat "shnookered" into this whole thing about 3-d animation.

I'll explain...
First off... about me... I grew up doodling..and pretty much couldn't stop... even while in the military for a short period this aweful habbit of mine got me in trouble on a few occasions. I won't profess to be terribly good, it's just that I can't stop.

Well, when time came to figure out what to do with myself, I went looking for technical training. Mind you, I meant full well to got into networking or something else that allows for a decent paycheck with a comfortable amount of slouching. Heh...

The lady doing all the paperwork at ITT-Tech asked some questions, and found out that I like to draw (my pesky wife had something to do with that :/ ) Presto chango I got voluntold to give "multimedia" a try.

I went through that and it was interesting (expensive and unfocused) and even landed me a job. I was doing simple animation (set key, rotate...) and a ton of modeling and rendering. Hmm..

Here I am 4 years later and I'm coming to the realization that 1)I should've studied 2d animation...some way some how. 2)Learning is expensive :(

I've enrolled in Animation Mentor to try to get myself back into the creative side of the creative industries.

If you've read this far you're probably a relative or classmate, but I still appreciate the time :)

I'll be posting my progress as I've said and maybe thoughts on techniques, the industry, life, etc.

Thanks again,
Mike