Frames per Second

Welcome to our blog where we will be posting anything animation related. Whether it is a drawing, a demo reel we found inspiring or even our own work in progress shots.

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Bobby Chiu tips

Here is a follow up for my last post. Bobby Chiu is an artist I really admire. Although he's more of an illustrator and draughtsman, I think as artists, th we have a lot to learn from one another, regardless of the discipline.

His post outlines 7 tips/lessons he would teach a 21 year old version of himself that he had to learn from the school of hard knocks.

Great insight from a really talented artist.

You can read it here.

-Hugo

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Getting into the Biz

I came across this in my twitter feed not too long ago. The age old question of how to get into the business is answered quite beautifully in the linked blog post.

It's funny because, although I've been in the industry for 8 years now, I still don't feel like I have the authority to speak on the subject. I have made so many bad decisions and made so many wrong turns I could counter balance that nice blog post about ''what to do'' with mine what you shouldn't. For now I'll just delve into one idea:

 Don't just rely on your school work. You and your classmates will all have  the same exercises and there's nothing that really sets you apart from them. You should be in the habit of doing your own personal projects and artistic exploration outside the confines of school and eventually work. I once had a teacher say don't let school get in the way of your education. I didn't fully understand it then. I do now after failing to seize some opportunities because I wasn't at the level that would allow me to do that.

Case in point: A friend of mine invited me to a student screening of the graduating class of the animation school he had gone to. There was a general base level and a handful of exceptional students that just stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Those guys will inevitably succeed in the industry, the others had an uncertain future in my opinion. What set apart that handful from the rest? When I look back on my student years I was definitely part of those who had an uncertain future. It was obvious that they had done the school work, done the assignments...but nothing more. The extra something came from somewhere outside of school. There was an interest, a motivation that led to explore beyond what the school was teaching you. You could probably add self-discipline, initiative, time management and maturity to that list of factors. Each one of those could be a blog post in itself. How much you learn and progress depends entirely on your ability to seek out information on your own.

I'll quickly add that nothing will sabotage your future career like self doubt and shaky self confidence. Being among other amazing artists makes you doubt that your good enough and that you made a bad career decision. This can be a self fulfilling prophesy. You can become what you think you are.

Other artists being amazing doesn't change the job you have to do, which is to buckle down, put in the hours and the work to get better.

If Football is a game of inches, so is art. Just move towards your goal every day an inch at a time. As long as it's a bit more than the day before, you're getting closer. Over time it adds up.

I didn't do any of these things and getting to where I wanted took much longer and was much more expensive than it should have.

Ok, I'm done rambling for today :)

-Hugo

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Madden Season

I recently saw a commercial for EA's Madden 2015. They definitely poured in a lot of cash on this commercial and I had a good laugh watching it.

You can check it out HERE

The point of this post isn't to rave about Madden. To be honest I've never played the game.

It's more to look at a progression of facial expressions and emotions. Obviously, it's all pushed really far but it's still interesting to go through.

The main character starts happy and care free, moving into defiance, slowly moving to despair and distraught. He then complete loses it, becomes unchained and goes into a psychotic evil.  It's over the top, but it's nice to see the emotional and expression range you can get from the same face.

I also liked how the girlfriend character had a very distinct and consistent bitchiness in her attitude. She doesn't have a single line but her body language communicates perfectly what she's thinking.

Finally, in this freeze frame we have a nice display of how pose and attitude say something about the characters. The costumes push the ideas further. The parallel for our purposes is that a character design should visually communicate the personality of the characters.

-Hugo

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Rest in peace Robin Williams.

He was a great man, a great actor and a great comic.

Mr Williams has been a huge inspiration for me throughout my entire life.

For everything you have brought us, Thank you Mr Williams.

Source: 

http://gawker.com/robin-williams-found-dead-in-california-home-1619738301?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

To finish I invite you all to watch his interview from inside the actors studio :

https://www.cloudy.ec/v/f5c7091004bcc

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Some Lunch Time Sketches

I haven't been drawing that much in the last couple of years but I've decided to pick up the sketchbook again and do a little bit of people watching and sketching during lunch.

I feel rusty and drawings certainly show it, but it's really a nice break from sitting in front of the computer all day.

The drawings feel a little stiff and a lot of the volumes aren't very well flushed out. I also think that the drawings aren't worked as a whole sufficiently. Some parts are very detailed whereas some are unworked.

Also, I see the uncertainty I have to put down a mark to define some aspects of the drawing. I think I'll need to just go for it and make the mistake rather than leave vague scribbles to define it.

In any event, I'll try to keep up some kind of drawing and sketching and see if I can post what I've been working on .

-Hugo

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Acquired Skill or Talent?

One idea that sometimes floats around is whether artistic talent, or any talent for that matter, is something you have at birth or if it's something you can pick up from hard work.

Not too long ago I picked up ''Outliers'' by Malcolm Gladwell. This book popularized the idea of the 10 000 hour rule. Whereby expert level skill is obtained through 10 000 hours of practice, and that some individuals that we consider ''talented'' merely found themselves in circumstances that allowed them to get those hours at earlier point than most in their lives.

With a little bit more searching, I found that this idea was based in part on a study called ''The role of deliberate practice in the Acquisition of expert performance''. This study followed groups of violinist and pianist. There were three groups studied. Best, Good and ''music teachers''. They compared the time the dedicated to ''deliberate practice''. An activity that requires some effort, is not necessarily enjoyable but is done with the specific objective of improving performance.

The study revealed that what differentiated the 3 groups was the hours spent on deliberate practice. The ''best'' practiced the most and the ''music teachers'' the least.

A similar study on chess players seemed to draw similar conclusions, in this case, study being the form of ''deliberate practice''. After 10 years of intense training and study, a level of expert performance was reached.

All this seems a little academic, but I guess in the end it offers a little inspiration to all of us by saying that if you're willing to put in the hard work, you can reach those goals you set your aims on.

The more batting practice, the better you'll be at hitting the ball, the more at bats you'll get. It's a snowball effect that works in your favour.

I'm still not going to write off the existence of talent all together, but it certainly gives you something to think about.

I do have one idea to leave off with on this whole issue. A philharmonic level expert violinist plays on a level very few reach. Great technique and artistry. Yet, what most of us like to listen to is stuff like the Beatles and Stones. 3 chord rock, technically much less sophisticated than what the  violinist is doing. These bandscreate something unique that speaks to a lot of us. Practice is a big part of the equation, but I think creativity and unique artistic expression isn't found through the violionist's type practice alone.

Ok, enough rambling, time to practice ;)

-Hugo

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Some Soccer Poses

In honour of the World Cup, I picked out a couple of still images that seem to tell a story through the posing, posture and body language of the people  being photographed.

I find particularly interesting images where you can see sadness and celebration side by side. The posture communicates everything you need to know about how they're feeling.

This one here isn't from the World Cup, but the posing is dynamic and you sense tension, action and movement in the scene. It's like a moment of suspense at a critical moment. A story being told in a single frame.

Certainly not the end of drama in this tournament. Always an interesting moment to do some people watching.

-Hugo

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Can’t wait to get my hands on this one!

- Ben

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I have always been a big fan of the franchise…now let’s wait and see :)

- Ben

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Glen Keane's new short Duet

This is a beautiful 2d animated short former Disney animator Glen Keane made for Google. Like the Buggy Night and Windy Day, it's designed for smart phones where the user controls where the camera will be looking. 

2d feature animation is usually animated at 24 fps. It's about 12 drawings, each of them being held for 2 frames. This technology however runs at 60fps, so that's 30 drawings per second! 

This is the Google I/O presentation, so you can skip to 54:00 min to see the short, or go to 38:00min if you want to see some making of and technical tidbits.

A beautiful piece of animation.

-Hugo

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2d Spiderman Animation

Here's a cool animation a friend of mine did on Flipbook (though coloured in photoshop I believe)

A great artist and animator!

-Hugo

Draw Spider-Man from Memo Dupinet on Vimeo.

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Animating for Fun :)

This is an interesting piece of 2d animation that looks like a moving watercolour painting.

It's part of what seems to be an afterwork project of animator Wayne Unten. You can check out more of this artist's work HERE:

Enjoy!

-Hugo

Dog and Butterfly from Wayne Unten on Vimeo.

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MOTOx animation

I few weeks ago I posted a small animation clip called ''Buggy Night''. I figured out however that this part of a greater initiative by Google to make animated shorts for phones. They were originally made to showcase the graphics capability of the MotoX phone. Motorola has since been sold to Lenovo, but Google held on to these ''Spotlight Stories''.

They have a lot of great artist and animators working on them like Pixar alumni Jan Pinkava and Mark Oftedal. Art director Jon Klassen (Has worked in feature and illustrated the book ''I want my hat back''). Apparently even Glen Keane is working on a 2d short or them!

They have an interactive element whereby the person holding the phone is actually controlling the camera and can chose to look anywhere in the scene.

There are 2 shorts out there: Windy Day and Buggy Night. The only way to see these without a MotoX phone for now are these youtube videos. Not the best quality, but enough to get a good feel for it.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this will evolve. A new frontier for animation :)

-Hugo

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Expression Change

Strange moment in the NBA playoffs can produce interesting pieces of animation reference.

Check out the facial expressions and expression change.

-Hugo

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Saw this posted on Spungella today and it looks amazing. 

I like everything about this piece. The poses are super dynamic and the timing and spacing is spot on.  He definitely tried mimicking  the anime style and it works.

Kudos to sonohilo this is genius work!

- Ben

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Elements of a Good artist

I saw a friend post a picture on facebook of a presentation he had gone to that had a powerpoint explaining what they thought it took to be a good artist. I think it applied to drawing and animation in particular.

Loosely summed up, they boiled it down to 3 things:

1. Imagination

2. Inspiration and study of other Artist

3. Study from Life and Caricaturing it.

Although it might seem like an oversimplification of what it takes to make good art, I certainly think that if we seek to work it into everything we create, our work will be stronger for it.

I'll add a little something to that list. I watched a film recently on sushi chef Jiro Ono called ''Jiro Dreams of Sushi''. He is a  3 michelin starred sushi chef considered by some to be the greatest sushi chef in the world.

I think what I could take away from it was :

- passion for his work

-constant search for improvement and perfection

-a lifelong dedication to the art.

This video is small exerpt of the film I found that explains a little of that viewpoint

-Hugo

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Chipotle Animation

Was in Toronto for the weekend and had a burrito at Chipotle's. Reminded me of these animations I saw on the net. The scarecrow animation is by an amazing studio called Moonbot. I'm not sure who did the second video but it's just as interesting and entertaining.

-Hugo