GREAT LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES 2013

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QUICK SIDE NOTE: I will be teaching an online workshop on visual story telling starting MARCH 19th If you are interested and want to know how to sign up for it click the link :)

     I'm teaching on this site called SKILL SHARE. There's a lot of things being taught on that sight but not much art, so the site reached out to me and I agreed to host a class for 3 weeks. ITs not crazy expensive at all, you pay $15 bucks or less for the class you want and then you're given access to the class online and you get to hear lectures from me and participate on assignments. Its really straight forward and fun.

     So here's the link for those who would like to learn about VISUAL STORYTELLING. I'm sharing everything I've learned since I started to work at Pixar and Disney. It's going to be dense with a lot of juicy info that I won't share on this blog :)  I strongly strongly suggest you check it out. It might actually blow our mind.

LINK to class
link to site

PS. If you email me and say you are interested in the class I can give you a discount, it use to be a 10 dollar discount, I think now I can just get you a 50% discount, which is still a pretty sweat deal!
UPDATE (March 16th): I have gotten more emails than expected so I have asked the owners of the site if they'd let me give out more discounts, and they said yes! So email me if you would like a discount code. it is now available until that day the class strts WHICH IS THE 19th.
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ANIM SQUAD

LINK TO SCHOOL HOMEPAGE

     I have never been more excited over something in a long time than I am over this (Well thats a lie, I was excited the other day over this ginormous burrito that was soooo good!.. but thats besides the point)  

     Theres a new animation school in Los Angeles. Most if not all the teachers are animators at Walt Disney Animation Studios. This is a tremendous opportunity to learn the tricks and skills of animation from real professionals. Not only are you learning from animators who work at the legendary Walt Disney Animation Studios but you are also learning from the traditions and skills of animators that passed on their knowledge from generation to generation. ANIMATION was out on the map by Disney Animation. forget about if they're movies are timeless or flop from time to time because if you are worried about story take a story-telling class! I'm talking about animation! If you want to learn animation the way Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg and Milt Kahl do it, then you go learn from a Disney Animator.

     There are other animation schools out there but this is the first time ever that Disney Animators are coming together for you! They want to teach and to pass on the knowledge and the ways of animation that have been pioneered since the days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. This is a priceless opportunity for those in southern california wishing to learn how to animate.


Where is this school Danny?? How can I find out more??
One of the many amazing things about this school is it's location. It's in the heart of hollywood (Hollywood blvd and Highland Ave., Los Angeles, CA.) Whats more inspirational than being where all the movies are made and being in the middle of everything?

HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA

What can I expect from this Animation School, will I like it, what's it going to be like??
     You expect top notch quality. Every single one of our teachers is a supervising animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. So you will be learning from the best. It's not a hassle to get to the school since its right on the red line METRO subway station in los angeles. You can expect a very intimate student teacher experience bc the class sizes are tiny (8 people) You can expect an experience tailored to you. you can bring in work you are already working, or  to improve your portfolio reel, or start from scratch and learn something new. Its up to you! There will be lectures, Demos, critiques, assignments and much much more! so expect awesomeness.

WHO ARE THE TEACHERS DANNY????
Meet them yourself! HERE, these animators a great and I can not think of a more friendlier bunch of people than these four guys. This school is just getting started, expect new teachers rotating in and out! the site will also be updated soon with videos and all sorts of fun things! The four teachers are:

Nathan Engelhardt;
Focus: Expert level students who want to take their work to a professional level and learn to polish like a boss

Adam Greene; Focus: Beginner students that want a running start on beginning their education in animation

Brent Homman: Focus will be those who are struggling in the middle. Past beginner but not quite expert level. 

Michael Franceschi: for those too far to come to LA but still want to learn!

Wait WAIT WAIT!!! Did I just read an ONLINE CLASS will be available Danny?
     I did indeed. There will be ONE class offered as an online class. they will try it out and see how it works. If your in San Francisco or Utah or the butt crack of no where with no animation school insight? THIS IS YOUR CHANCE to get a first class, 101, professional: "This is how to F***ing animate" can of whoop ass and learn something! :)  I'm kidding about the ass kicking. 

The latest these guys have animated on were Disney's Oscar winning Paperman and Oscar nominated Wreck-it Ralph!

 


THE ANIMATION EXPERIENCE continued:
     You show up and bring your laptop (There's nothing like working with something comfortable and familiar. ) All classes will take place at night. Whats around the school besides everything? (music schools, acting schools, stores, restaurants and everything else you could think of. There's lots of energy around! There are all kinds of artist here in hollywood and you'll get to meet a lot of them too! The walk of fame is literally in front of the building. Since all the studios are in LA and around Hollywood, do you know what that means? NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES.


COMPARE AND CONTRAST
-Animation mentor, a lot of students fall through the cracks and dont attain the skills the need to be hired.
-Cal Arts and other schools (except CCA bc that school kicks ass) Who wants to spend 4 years and close to 50,000 bucks?
-Anim Colab is also a good school and just as good as Anim Squad. you can think of the Anim Squad as southern california's answer to Anim Squad.. but its up north where its cold, and they have like.. nature and shit. Who wants to go see a bear when you could see this accross the street from the Anim Squad location in Hollywood, California.

Last word:
     This is a something you will learn from. your mind will be blown. you will improve, you most likely will be at your highest potential artistically by the time you are done with this school. also take my class I'm teaching on skillshare.com here's the link to my class! CLASS

Also if you do take a class at Anim Squad, mention that you heard it from me and something great should happen :)

GRAPH EDITOR: when you are panicking

Animator specific post...

     Graph Editor Tricks that I have found my self using. One is for when I am animating in stepped and the Other trick is for when I'm animating Layered. (stepped is when your graph editor does not allow your splines to curve and keeps looking like steps, layered is a way of animating when you FEEL the animation and its timing from the root out)

     I'm not here to debate which way of animating is better, I'm not about to regress into a school girl type of shouting match. I'm just going to give two tricks I find my self using often and the help me out a lot. Actually.. they've saved my ass more time than I care to admit :)


     So.. lets say you are animating Layered, so happy that you are getting results super fast and you even dare to think you might actually finish before the deadline. But soon you perfect start disappears and soon you animation is muddy, your timing is wrong, your takes melt into each other and nothing is left of your initial timing! You were almost done but now you don't know what to do. There are hitches in the arms, the nose arcs and you even discover you have problems in your root! What are you going to do?

What I do is:

I do hope this makes sense. The numbers at the bottom are frames on the time line.

     So I kind of start over but keep my 'blue print' of what my animation once was. I use the buffer curves (ghost curves) to guide me. I go through each curve pretty fast and double check its right and working well with the curves before it on the hierarchy. Doing this process saves more time than actually trying to fix everything while all the body parts are moving. And most of the time you don't even know that the curves you are fixing are responsible for the pops or bad timing in the first place. So that's why once you remove all the curves from sight and slide them back one by one, you easily come across the bad curves that were messing everything up. Its a bit tedious but it goes by fast. and you know once you are done, you have done everything you could have done and that leaves you feeling satisfied.


     The other situation where I use one of my tricks (well I wouldn't call it a trick, its more a piece of advice) is when I'm animating in stepped. Usually I'm pretty far along with my animation and I'm ready to start splining and making my curves smooth when I realize when that making my curves smooth is LOOSING all my timing etc. Now I'm faced with a choice: Do I continue smoothing out my stepped curves and FIGURE it out like how us good little animators were taught?? Or do i say fuck it and just keep animating in stepped?

I say Fuck it!... bad choice of words danny.. bad choice..

     BUT DANNY why would you animate like that? I don't make this decision out of laziness all the while as I am adding breakdowns I have my eye on the graph editor watching the curves FORM as breakdowns and poses are added and added. once I can see the curves develop more defined, then I will start to clean them up (all the while in stepped) Eventually my animation will be on 2's 3's and 4's here and there. This method keeps my timing and I spend more time animating than fighting with the graph editor. I never allow my graph editor to become messy and I never ignore my curves. I baby sit them the whole way still using as little controls as I can while getting the most out of them.

    These are my methods, they are not wrong, they are not right, but they allow me to finish my animation. It works for me and I encourage that if these methods do not seem to help you, you will search for a way that does. Many times I see a lot of great blocking and Ideas turn into mush and then becomes forever lost in the graph editor.


    Internship deadlines are coming fast in the spring, I wish all of you who are applying to places the best of luck and happy holidays! I guess I should mention here that I will be trying out tutoring after the new years. Not online tutoring but a real legit person to person hands on tutoring. I'll see how it goes. It might be cool it might actually be a utter complete business failure :) I'll do a post in a few days with more details about my plans for this... experiment!