I have acquired a few books which I think might be useful to developing my abilities in animation.
Animation from Pencils to Pixels: Classical Techniques for the Digital Animator by Tony White
The book not only covers many topics of 2D animation, as many concepts and information in here is relevant to 3D animation as well, and as you can see the subjects can get very specific in perfecting animation for standalone bodyparts like the hands, or arms. There is also information and advice on getting a job, ensuring the contracts you take out are well informed and not liable to deception e.g securing a full rights clause to a film in the contract so that it cannot be sold to someone else for more money once you find the financial funding. There are tips on networking, portfolio and showreel advice, and more information to help improve your animation in one book than I thought possible. I'll be referring to this book a lot where animation is relevant. The Fundamentals of Animation by Paul Wells.
This book is similar to the one above but more relevant to all forms of animation rather than just 2D. However I believe it is equally useful as I now have books on niche and general areas of study in the realm of animation and can make use of whichever one I need. It covers everything from environment to character design, to the role an animator has as a director or an editor, as well as a full detailed walkthrough of every stage behind developing an animation, from initial concept ideas to finished production.
From her origins in the Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia (chosen, she says, due to their liberal admissions policy and her lack of a portfolio), Christine learned to develop her computer animation skills as well as the basics of getting a foothold in the business.
Reminding her audience of the importance of networking (cannily assisted via a PowerPoint projection of the words ‘DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE’) and internships (Christine took a placement at Nickelodeon in her final year), she stresses that though universities can teach you a lot, it requires a lot more to be able to succeed: knowing how to make intelligent and thoughtful decisions with your work cannot be taught and, at the end of the day, “no one is going to get you a job but you”.
Christine’s intuition took her west to San Francisco where, after a stint of staying on a friend’s sofa while she brushed up her show-reel, she got a job at Lucas Arts working as an animator on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (or TFU as she refers to it, in what I can only hope is a reference to the robot Private Iron’s motto from the TV show Spaced).
There she learned the harsher realities of the industry: of working under a top-down hierarchy, of having to re-learn everything she thought she’d already learned at university, and of working 80-90 hour weeks. It was her first real experience developing games, and it was lucrative enough to net her a job for Tim Schafer’s (The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts) company Double Fine and the opportunity to work on their latest release Brütal Legend.
It was a new experience for her, one that involved much more creative freedom, but one that almost ruined the company. An indie company with an ambitious project, Double Fine faced difficulties in finding a publisher willing to take on the game: when it finally found release, poor sales axed the potential for a possible sequel as well as the company’s plans for the future.
It was in the aftermath of this that Christine got her first role as lead animator. In the wake of an intense brainstorming session known as Amnesia Fortnight, Christine was put in charge of Iron Brigade, a downloadable RTS which, through a deal with Xbox Live along with other titles like Costume Quest and Stacking, helped save the company.
From there she landed a job at Valve, where the strict rules of Lucas Arts and the relaxed atmosphere of Double Fine merge into a comfortable whole: creativity is encouraged and ideas are developed organically through a process of collaboration and mutual respect.
Reaching the end of her presentation, Christine Phelan breathes a sigh of relief for not showing any signs of her pottymouth (except for a solitary expletive, when her microphone fell off her jacket) and offers some final words of consideration: “working in games is hard…but it’s also really fun.
National Prize nominated student made film.
My favourite animated film at the festival.
Some of the guests and speakers
The talk from Vanessa Boyce, CG Supervisor for the new Total Recall film, from Double Negative was also very informative and enlightening.
Mark Shapiro presents a talk on the production of ParaNorman, as well as a showing of the film which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Industrial Light & Magic was founded in 1975 by George Lucas, and produced the special effects for one of my favourite films in my favourite film franchises; Raiders of the Lost Ark - and it seems they also produced the effects for The Avengers as well.
Their YouTube Channel appears to be official and features some comments from someone who works within the company, answering questions. I decided from now on I'll keep an eye on this channel as i could obtain some worthwhile insight into the industry, as I have found already.
'It's always helpful for a director to be knowledgeable about the visual effects process.
Much of the time, visual effects is one of the first departments on a film and
we stay on until the very end. Visual effects supervisors provide a number of
services during that time from helping plan the shoots to educating the
director to what he/she can expect to see at each stage of the post process, to
making suggestions which may help guide the creative. VFX Supervisors have to
wear many hats.' Milestones:
·1975: Resurrected the use of VistaVision; first use of a motion
control camera (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope)
·1982: First completely computer-generated sequence (the
"Genesis sequence" in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
·1985: First completely computer-generated character, the
"stained glass man" in Young Sherlock Holmes
·1988: First morphing sequence, in Willow
·1988: Integrating 2D animated characters with live-action footage
in Who Framed Roger Rabbit
·1989: First computer-generated 3-D character, the pseudopod in The
Abyss
·1991: First partially computer-generated main character, the T-1000 in Terminator
2: Judgment Day
·1992: First time the texture of human skin was computer generated,
in Death Becomes Her
·1993: First time digital technology used to create a complete and
detailed living creature, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park,
which earned ILM its thirteenth Oscar
·1995: First fully synthetic speaking computer-generated character,
with a distinct personality and emotion, to take a leading role in Casper
·1995: First computer-generated photo-realistic hair and
fur (used for the digital lion and monkeys) in Jumanji
·1996: First completely computer-generated main
character, Draco in Dragonheart
·1999: First computer generated character to have a full human
anatomy, Imhotep in The Mummy
·2000: Creates OpenEXR imaging format.
·2006: Develops iMocap system, which uses computer vision
techniques to track live-action performers on set. Used in the creation of Davy
Jones and ship's crew in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's
Chest
·2011: First animated feature produced by ILM, Rango
It's amazing how one company can be involved with so many films,
although with it's beginnings with George Lucas and Star Wars it was sure to
come a long way with a secure financial future. They have worked on some of my
favourite films like Terminator 2. I can say that I find them inspiring for
this work alone, but it seems that they have also made many advances in CGI as
a whole.
·richardknights100
How
much do you charge for your services?
·
ILMVisualFX
It varies depending on what we are being asked to do.
·
richardknights100
How high is the pixle rate you can do with your software? Are you
prepared for UHD Quality?
·
ILMVisualFX
We're well beyond UHD.
o
Oscar
Rivas Poma
How
much harddrive space does all that rendered footage need?
I've always wondered. Does working on the special effects for
countless hours mean you don't want to watch the finished product or is it still fun to
watch after you're done?
Watching the final product of a year (or more) of work is very
rewarding. Often it's the first time we see it complete with sound and all of
the non-fx shots so it's a very different experience than what we see while
working day to day.
Bill Westenhofer, a VFX supervisor for Rhythm & Hues, delivered his acceptance speech, but just as he began to thank all of the VFX folks who worked so hard on the film and highlight R&H's financial woes, theJaws music played to usher him offstage, and eventually his mic was cut off. Now everyone who went over their allotted time got the Jaws music, but SF Gate notes that just 43 seconds elapsed between the time the winner was announced and when Westenhofer got the Jaws music, and 112 seconds between the announcement and the mic turn-off. Compare that to the 131 seconds spent on the Avengers cast setting up and announcing the award, and 158 seconds on Ang Lee's Best Director speech, with nary a minor chord sounded. On a day when the VFX community was asking for respect, many took this as a slap in the face.
Lee's Best Director speech, in which he failed to thank the VFX team or mention Rhythm & Hues also attracted significant ire. It didn't help that when Lee was asked about the Rhythm & Hues bankruptcy last week, he said, "I would like it to be cheaper and not a tough business." In response, the VFX community issued An Open Letter to Ang Lee, noting the many reasons the VFX industry is an expensive one and asking directors to pay attention to the financial conditions in which these VFX houses are attempting to survive.
I can't help but feel that as an industry, people are prone to being exploited, but this is indeed quite terrible. Especially as I read an earlier story on this claiming that the reason the artists can't fight back is because there's a hundred dumb kids ready to replace them if they leave, as they would love the opportunity to work for Hollywood and the big film industry. I am probably one of those kids.
The problem lies in that the industry demands these artists to work extremely long hours for long at a time without paying them for the extra work. If the company don't do it, they are simply blacklisted by filmmaker groups and not used, and so they go out of business.
This is especially unfortunate for the case of Life of Pi, though, because it was so heavily reliant on CGI. Without the CGI, the film would be much, much less than it is, and so the artists are getting much less credit then they deserve. This is an unfortunate dark side to the realm of the filmmaking / VFX industry, but one I think we should all be aware of.
Introducing all the elements of my project so far in After Effects made it feel like my film was finally coming together. It was fairly simple to introduce my image sequences as I didn't need to do anything to them to integrate them into my backgrounds as there was no green screen effect to remove from them. I used the keylight effect to remove the green on my green screen live action film footage and it got easier every time I did it. I learned many shortcuts and on the whole I feel that it is a much much easier program to use than maya and I intend to use it as much as possible in the future.
It's similar to photoshop in the way it builds up overlapping layers and I even refer to it as photoshop for videos. There are many pre-set effects, such as footage, or filters like blurring, that make editing your footage to the exact way you want it achievable. I do have one problem with it though.
Unlike Final Cut Pro, you need to 'collect files', which is quite annoying. Files seem to go missing and it can mess with your time quite dramatically. Other than this though I think After Effects is a great program, at least for editing footage. For sound, Final Cut is definitely the way to go.
The effects I used the most, by far, were gaussian blur and radial blur. I used these a lot because with the settings there are many ways that radial blur can be changed to replicate numerous amounts of things, whereas I used gaussian blur to create field of depth in many shots.
I also used a lot of masking. For just about every piece of footage I had a mask to direct where I wanted it to go or what I wanted it to do - unless I wanted it as it was without a mask though there are fewer examples of that to note.
The scene in which I am beamed into the ship I am quite proud of. I used a radial blur to simulate the light being distorted through the smoke around me that forms after I appear on the ship. I also have those lights turn on one by one, and I appear to react to the lights turning on within the footage by turning to face them. As this happens I use some of the art I developed, reacting as a sort of precautionary / biological / smart science-word scanner thing. Afterwards a few alien letters appear above my head, which is basically to connotate that I am an accepted life form or that I am not dangerous, or something along those lines. I like this scene because so much seems to be going on when I'm on the ship and you can watch it several times and notice these things one at a time.
The scene which I had a lot of trouble with was the laserbeaming of the aliens, if only because it took a while to get the laser beam looking decently good and powerful looking. I did this through screen shake and the introduction of an explosion. You can also see the laser beam fly past the aliens, creating said explosion. So much happens within these last few seconds of the film it was a mix of trying to cram in as much as possible, leaving the audience caught off guard and wondering what exactly happened. At the same tine, I did not want to confuse them entirely and leaving them wondering what was supposed to have just happened.
All in all I feel I have learned a lot about After Effects in a very short amount of time, and I'd liked to have spent more time using it.
