Andrew Gordon Returns - Animation Master Class

Pixar Animator is back, and give the same lecture he gave 2 years ago in Edmonton. This is awesome for the whole Bioware team to be present and learn the things I've learned about of Pixar Methods.

Andrew Gordon graduated from VanArts, and worked for Pixar over 12 years. He worked on my of the films I loved and share his knowledge on animation techniques, appeal, and process with back to back reviews.

Principles of Animation - The ingredients to make animation believable.

• Squash and Stretch - Gives a feeling that either the object is made out of rubber or stone. You want to be able to hide the squash and stretch when playing your animation, but when you slow it down you will be able to tell where the areas of squash and stretch is being added t give a sense of weight.
• Anticipation - It's the preparation before an action. Typically its the opposite direction before the action. Anticipating before a jump is where the character is squatting and preparing to build power then jump.
• Staging - Setting up the stage so the idea is clear, making sure that your animation is a fit for your camera. And make sure the animation is clear when you review it in silhouette.
• Drag and Follow Thru - Follow thru means the attachments of a body continue to move after the body stops, and the attachments ill follow through and subtle over time. Overlap means the attachments movements will be offset from the main body, not everything has to move all at once. Drag is when the body moves, then the attachments will react to keep up.
• Arcs - Very Important Principle, its natural to move in arcs in space. When you throw a baseball and pay attention to all the joints, you will see that hands, feet, knees, core, nose all moves with arcs.
• Ease in and Ease out - Important for natural movement. Every object needs time to accelerate and slow down. Ease in and out between Extreme poses. Heavy objects take longer to accelerate, Lighter is faster to accelerate to the next pose.
• Exaggeration - Normal ideas / poses are commonly boring. But by pushing the idea / pose, you will be taking a much more interesting approach, for your audience.
• Timing and Spacing - Timing is everything, it's used to help develop the mood of a character, happy, sad, excited, etc. Also, an object's weight determines how a character will interact with it. Like pushing a heavy vs light Box.
• Secondary actions - Secondary idea or gesture the helps support the primary action for the scene. Arms, Hands, Legs, Feet can have a mind of its own to support the main idea.
• Appeal - Its all about making shapes work together, by understanding what makes a good pose. Design and Movement should be appealing to the audience.
• Strait ahead and Pose to Pose - 2 different styles of animating out your scene. Strait ahead means animating frame after frame. Pose to Pose works best for planning out your scene and determine where to address the character's mood. Layering is another style 3d animators use to block out their animation, typically they will animate Bone layers. Root, Core, Arms/Legs, Head, Hands/Feet, Face.

Staging and Pose Design - The art of directing the audience's eyes and feelings.

• Staging is all about the presentation for your scene. You want to be able to control the audience eyes, by using colors, shapes, contrast, and correct camera angles.
• Color gives a visual element to your stage. It can help direct the mood of the scene, red means trouble, yellow means aware, saturated colors represents depression, bright warm colors give a sense of happy.
• Angle shapes can build intensity to your scene. Using a triangle staging, will direct the eye to look at 3 points. For example, having 3 characters talk about an important issue, the talker is the primary point, the reacting character is 2nd point, and the listener is 3rd point.
• When introducing our character, you want to give an awesome first impression. Signify the certain elements that portrays to your character, this will give the audience a taste of your character's design.
• Contrast plays a big role in your scene.. By using (dark vs white), (active vs calm), (big vs small), etc. You can direct the audience's eyes n 1 shot of several shots.
• Staging all your shots correctly and putting it all together, will make your scene Awesome.

Pose Design

Hand Poses

Locomotion

Acting for Animation

Gesture in Animation

Planning

Blocking

Facial Animation

Polish

Demo Reels

Thank you Bioware for giving me the opportunity to attend this class once more.

Awesome Animator - Carlos Baena

Carlos Baena is a professional animator and now a cofounder of the online school Animation Mentor, which was started in March, 2005. It was the first post-secondary school that helped students to pursue a career in animation. At the school, students work with mentors from major studios in a production-style environment, and graduate with a professional demo reel.

http://www.carlosbaena.com/

Animatin Mentor's Character Animation Program

http://www.animationmentor.com/masterclass/animalscreatures/overview.html

Toastmaster - 2nd Speech

Toastmasters Speech 2: Organize Your Speech

When you speak, does your audience get it?
If your audience doesn’t grasp your message (even though your topic is one you know they are interested in), you need to rethink the way you present it. You need to organize your ideas to promote understanding.The second Toastmasters speech project addresses organizing your speech. This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and links to numerous sample speeches.

Topic Ideas
My own Garden - Eating Fresh Foods/What you need/Plant/Nurture
Benefits of Youtube - Funny/Music Videos/Educational
YouTube has taught me many things -
Planning a Vacation - Find Great Deals/Search for Activities/Look for Restaurants
Internet Television - Hulu/Playon/Future of TV
Things Happen for a Reason - Story of where Life can take you

Outline Speech / Style
Chronological - flows with sequence..such as PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE or STEP 1-2-3
Spatial - A method of speech organization in which the main points follow a directional pattern.
Casual - shows cause/effect relationship, Hurricane forms then what.
Comparative - Persuasive speech, to convince one way or the other.
Topical - is when your speech is 'of the moment, relating to a current topic.
Problem Solution - begin with a problem and follow up with a solution.


Video Examples

Mookie's Emprove Speech on animation

Just a regular work day. A few people came into our room wanting to see the life of an animator. How we work and what are some cool stuff we can show them.
At the time I was very tired, from staying up so late working on a Short Video for Nima, and I did not have any work on my computer at that time. It would tken me a while to dig up a random file to present to the folks.

Mookie volunteered to give a 10 min speech of animation.

• He already had a Animation up on his screen that he used to his advantage.
• He talked about the Simple basic of aniamtion.
• Create a pose - Place a key frame - and check out your animation by pressing play
• He showed the simple tools on what he is doing, then get them involved with animation.
• What would you like to do? I will place the Key.
• Once you have them feel like they animated.
• Talk about the process on what it takes to get it into game.
• Make animation -> work with programmer -> review it ingame
• Now for show and tell show a file that is nicely structured W/ a RENDER
• Get them involved
  
• Talk about character and some of its challenges
• Then show a rendered animation
• If you still have time, pick up a light saber and talk about reference and research

Mookie also gave recognition to alot of people who worked on the project, and just let the guest know what they do.

Thanks Mookie for giving me some guidance on how to "Talk about animation at my desk"

• Talk about what you know
• Get them involved, by having them ask questions
  
• Make them laugh -> This comes natural when you are comfortable
  

Toastmaster - Table Topic Tips

How to Clean Mocap

Here are some easy steps to remember how to select a loop cycle, clean up mocap, and correct your speed.

• Nice tip when selecting your loop cycle from Raw Mocap data
• Separate the movement cycles.
• Make sure beginning and end frame pose are relatively the same.
• Create new layer and bracket the middle frame.
• Copy pose from the in-between beginning and end pose.
• Paste it on the beginning and end.
• Go through your selections and pick the best cycle

• Cleaning up Mocap for movement cycles
• Check fingers
• Check Spine, does it bounce to much?
• Delete the X-rot curve to reduce the noise on knees.
• Smooth out the trajectory on the knees.
• Add a little symmetry and balance to upper torso, on another layer.

• Correct your speed
• Calculate how far your character need to travel in a given time.
• Move your world bone, to correct location.
• On another layer, plant feet by eye balling the ball of the foot.