Animator Doodles

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    Well Big Hero 6 came and went and it was definitely an adventure, That would make it.. my 3rd Disney film under my belt. Now I'm working on Disney's ZOOTOPIA which is looking very promising. And as if I already didn't have enough on my plate I'm also teaching at CalArts 2D animation which is a lot of fun.

         I though I'd make a post and show you a window into my day to day life. It's not a crazy insight unless you are really fascinated with an animator's day to day doodles and the humor I have developed on my Snapchat. Enjoy the pictures and always keep in mind, every situation have entertainment value!

 

 

 

 

 

Why a bouncing ball?

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    I found this wonderful post on Cartoon Brew-ED that I feel all animators need to see. It illustrates how all 12 principles of animation are used in animation. If you are a student and you're thinking, "why am I learning how to do a bouncing ball?? WHY!?" This hopefully answers your question. If you can animate a flour-sack well, you can animate anything. The only thing standing in your way are probably technical skills such as drawing.

     

Post by Cartoon Brew-ED.

Art of Disney's FROZEN

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“Now then, let us begin. When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now: but to begin.”   -Hans Christian Anderson, "The Snow Queen" 

Anna Drawing Artist: Jin Kim

Elsa the snow queen by Jin Kim

 How do you take an idea and show it to the world? DRAWINGS!
     
        It took about 600 artist to make the movie FROZEN. All 600 deserve their moment in the lime light but I want to specifically bring attention to some amazing art made by some talented people at Disney. It took 70 years of off and on development, innumerable story variations, and many failed attempts but the Snow Queen finally has finally been initiated into the disney family. Enjoy these concept/visual development drawings and paintings I have collected from the corners of the internet of my fellow Disney Artists. David Womersley did the following landscapes!

Landscapes show scale and can set the tone of the story (Artist: David Womersley)

Snow isn't just white, snow can reflect a spectrum of colors! (Artist: David Womersley)

       Keep in mind that 80 percent of all art work made for a movie is never seen by the outside world. Why? Because when an artist is drawing for a movie, they are exploring the film. For example: this means an artist might do a hundred drawings trying to figure out how a character should look. "Is he too short, no he should be taller, he looks too old in this drawing, ooh how about a beard? Is he too skinny?" The artist draws and draws until finally, he/she comes across a drawing the director likes. That chosen drawing is the only one to live on while the other hundreds of exploratory drawings are put away. These drawings below by Brittney Lee and Bill Schwab are golden.

Artist: Bill Schwab

arttist: Bill Schwab

Artist: Brittney Lee

In my opinion, this is one of the best Disney dress of all time (artist: Brittney Lee) 

      These following model packets show the range of emotion for the sisters and Olaf. As an animator these drawings serve as guidelines and they help us keep the characters on model. Every character has a specific personality, We work to make sure everyone knows every characteristic of each character so that they are believable when they are up on the screen. They really capture the essence of the "Disney appeal." Jin Kim and Hyun Min Lee are the talented artists responsible for model packets below! 

good drawing = strong knowledge of techniques and life drawing (Jim Kim)

I love to practice drawing these on my spare time (Jim Kim)

Olaf and appealing mouth shapes! (Artist: Hyun Min Lee)

      Below are some Paintings from Lisa Keene. She is great at showing a full emotional range of color within an icy white setting. Check out these next three paintings by Her

Artist: Lisa Keene

Artist: Lisa Keene

Artist Lisa Keene

___________________________________________________________

THE SNOW QUEEN

“Many a winter’s night she flies through the streets of the town, and peeps in at

the windows; and they then freeze in so wondrous a manner that they look like flowers.”

“It was a lady; her cloak and cap were of snow. She was tall and of slender figure, and of a dazzling whiteness. It was the Snow Queen.”

The Snow Queen by Elena Ringo

“… a woman, dressed in garments of white gauze, which looked like millions of starry snow-flakes linked together. She was fair and beautiful, but made of ice — shining and glittering ice. Still she was alive and her eyes sparkled like bright stars, but there was neither peace nor rest in their glance”

Copyright Disney Enterprises Inc

Artist: Marc Davis

Disney has been trying to make this movie for years..  Copyright Disney Enterprises Inc

       Why was it so hard to make the Snow Queen into a film? Mostly because in the original story the Queen is described beautifully but is lacking in personality and is completely un-relatable. Her actions are unexplained and she is not even present in the climax of the original story. How could one make an entire movie out of a character that has no dimension? This has been the question of the century in the Walt Disney studios since 1943... 

     Finally, the making of The Little Mermaid, another tale by Hans C. Andersen, was a success for Disney and literature once again springboard for Disney features. Many people tried to work on the story of the Snow Queen, even Disney Legend Glenn Keane tried but to no avail. After Tangled was a success, in 2010 the studio again tried to thaw the story of the Snow Queen with the directors from Beauty and Beast and an army of established artists.. John Lasseter also joined the fray as executive producer but again the story did not work...

      Disney then announced the film under the title, FROZEN! It was to be made and they gave it a release date and all! No story, no characters, no where to start!!!?? One simple suggestion changed all that:

“What if Anna and Elsa were sisters?”

      The rest is history, from that little suggestion the Snow Queen snow balled into what it is today. The resulting story is inspired by the original story and nothing more. The integral themes of the Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale are still intact: Love, Family, and finding your inner strength. This movie no matter what flaws it may have, has an equal number of reasons to be able to stand on it's own and hold a place in the pantheon of Disney Classics. 

David Womersley and Brittney Lee

Art: Lisa Keene

Shape and line must me continued through broken structures (design) Artist: David W.

    Go watch the movie and I hope you like it! Stay after the credits and you'll get a bonus clip and if you search and look hard enough, you might see some cameos by another Disney princess!!!! That's all I'm saying :) Thanks for reading, soak in the art and always keep in mind, my blog = my thoughts. They are not facts, just insights from my world here at Disney that I love sharing with you!

Artist Brittney Lee

Artist: Hyun Min Lee

OALF!! Artist: Hyun Min Lee

Shiyoon Kim

Improving Your Animation 101

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lol

       If you are an aspiring animator (or artist) and you find yourself spending more time reading than actually DOING anything then I'm writing this for you. No  baseball player ever read a lot about baseball and then was an amazing baseball player. If you think that since animation isn't a sport you do not have to practice?? Wrong. Articles and tips can get you motivated and inspired to work but thy wont make you great.

      The nine old men of animation (9 men who invented the guidelines of HOW TO ANIMATE) they didn't have anyone give them tips or tricks. They had to do Good ol' hands-on-training. I've searched the internet and asked around and I have put together a list of exercises for an aspiring animator to do! Even if you consider yourself advanced I would suggest you still start from level one. never hurts to make sure you have your abc's/basics locked down :)

      Always remember the 12 principles of animation (google it if you do not know them bc it will change your world!) you should try to incorporate all of them in all your animation test if possible! I put in parenthesis the skills the exercise challenges but always remember that all the 12 principles should addressed.

Basics
Bouncing ball (loop) (squash and stretch/spacing)
Bouncing ball across the screen (2 bounces) (squash and stretch/spacing)
____________________________________
Cinder Block sliding off a shelf, hitting the floor. (spacing, form)
Flour Sac Jump (mass)
A blink (spacing/squash and stretch)
A head turn (transitions/ arcs)

breaking a sweat
walk cycle (technical)
run cycle (technical)
character jumping (physical/ spacing)
Suicide backwards fall off a ledge (subtle delays and overlap)
A character getting up from a chair (physical, anticipation)
A smile (face muscles, appeal)
A sneeze (exaggeration and timing)
Do an action that requires a 'smear' (technical)
Laughing (reference studying)

Marathon training
Animate a hand doing something-close up (anatomy)
character lifting a heavy object (weight)
animate a dog shaking after a bath (overlap follow through)
hammering a nail (timing spacing)
character blowing up a balloon (physicality)
piano falling on a character (timing weight)
character brushing their teeth (personality)
character eating a sandwich (personality)
getting up out of bed (physical personality)
waiting for the bus stop (entertainment/ appeal)

Quitters quit, winners win
character throwing a bucket of water on another (physical acting)
tug of war b/w two characters (tension)
character drinking wine (research)
character making an egg- full process from fridge to mouth (rhythm and timing)
A feather falling and being blown by the wind (reference)
character reacting to "your parents are dead" (acting)
putting on a pair of pants (physical)
sleeping character being startled, then going back to sleep (rhythm and texture)


KEEP IN MIND - These will make you better not get you a job. Studios want to see dialogue and acting. what these exercises above do is help you become a better animator!

You are not animating lines, you are animating a personality, an emotion, the feelings. you are animating something deeper than just what you see.

keep it simple.

You don't have to show anyone, these tests are for you!!!

working out isn't fun, animation should be. that is the ONLY difference between sit ups and animation :)

internship deadline 2 weeks away?  ...SMH

MOMENTUM 101

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Momentum! aka INERTIA

      Always remember my advice and views are just one possibility. Chocolate might not be the best ingredient for every cake... This post is less of a lecture but more of a bunch of tips put together that have helped me out over the years. 

     When animating things move you must establish a force. Ask yourself: what is making this object/body-part move? Can you 'see' that visually?
For example: if you are observing a body is walking across the screen you could ask yourself: what is making it move? You answer: The legs. Can you see it? Are the legs moving the body realistically?.....

     Believable Animation always dies when things move for just the hell of it. When your object moves realistically, the viewer then has the freedom to observe the story/character instead of wasting time figuring out why the animation looks so weird.

small ball vs. BIG BALL
     Heavy objects take longer to accelerate and decelerate but they can move just as fast as anything else. (the ease in and ease out will just take more frames!)
      Now for CG animators we have to translate this knowledge into the all mighty graph editor (DUN Dun dun) That might sound like a scary task so I made a cheat sheet for you. Some teachers might just say, go explore the graph editor and figure it out for yourself. Why waste your time when i have the answers right here. Leonardo Davinci would have his students copy to learn! And they all ended up as great accomplished painters in their time.
      Below check out how the small ball has short ease in and ease outs. Smaller things usually have less mass which equals less momentum when it's moving around. Heavy objects will have longer ease in ease outs.

On the left is the graph editor for the small ball and the right side has the graph editor for the heavy ball. 

MORE TIPS
-Make sure anything pulling something heavy has a 'straight' line in it
-In a walk cycle: heavy spends more time at the bottom

The Balloon Exercise 
-will challenge you to: animate something light with little momentum, perfect your bouncing ball skills by forcing you to animate the same pattern upside down. Animate a ballon bouncing across the ceiling!

Remember this is just like a bouncing ball but upside down. 

Shapes
         When looking at your animation you should be able to pause it and still see what direction the momentum is going in the object that is moving. Moving your characters and objects around isn't the whole story. You must construct appealing shapes that communicate where the momentum is going. The silhouette can say so much about what direction your object is going.

You should always tell where the mass is at in soft objects. 

-Just in case I didn't make it clear enough, here are the definitions of the concepts I am typing about.

MOMENTUM from wikipedia
In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum (pl. momenta; SI unit kg m/s, or equivalently, N s) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. For example, a heavy truck moving fast has a large momentum—it takes a large and prolonged force to get the truck up to this speed, and it takes a large and prolonged force to bring it to a stop afterwards. If the truck were lighter, or moving more slowly, then it would have less momentum.

Issac Newton on INERTIA
"The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line."