Michael Amos Interview - November 2012

Hello,
 

Hopefully this interview makes a loud splash, as we catch up with Dreamworks animator Michael Amos. Michael's work was featured in Animation Mentor's showcase for 2011. Michael's theatrical approach to animation features a colourful host of characters and beautiful rendering. I hope you all enjoy reading about his work and influences. 

Thank you Michael for your time and kick things off showing his beautiful demo reel.

  

Please tell us a bit about your passion for musicals, theatre and film. 

Firstly, thanks so much Steven for asking to interview me and talk about my work. I am a big fan of the 11 second club and often vote in the monthly competition and read the forum and blog. Film has always been a passion of mine. For me, seeing a movie is about the feeling you get when watching it. The films that really inspire and stay with me are the ones that effected me the most in the cinema. The first film I saw was ET when it was released, I was 4. It was probably a bit of a bad choice that my Dad made to take me to see it, but the terror I felt during the end sequence with the white tubes and doctors at their house was also a feeling I loved. I also remember leaving the cinema and just sitting down at the curb on the street unable to speak! It is this feeling that keeps me going to the cinema to search for films that really effect me.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a favorite as well. Again, my Dad took me along, with my younger brother (who again was much too young to see it and was scarred for life... me chasing him around the house trying to pull out his heart did not help!)

Amadeus would be my favorite film of all time. It is the perfect film with the most amazing score, acting, casting, costumes and story. I can frame through F. Murray Abraham's acting as Salieri over-and-over and constantly be blown away by the emotion behind that performance.

And more recently Hugo and The Artist. These film had a real nostalgic feeling to them for me. The sense of wonder that you felt in childhood and something that I think people felt more often in the early 20th century is something that drives me to animation. This feeling is something I am always trying to recapture both for myself, and when I animate, in my audience.

Which brings me to animation. The ability to breath life and a believable performance into a character is a talent that never stops amazing me. I am always surprised and so excited to see my animation come to life. I loved Loony Tunes and Disney animation as a kid. I watched Pinocchio, The Rescuers, Peter Pan and Sword in the Stone over and over and over again. And I still do! Medusa scarred me so much I couldn't watch that film for years (I seem to like being frightened in films!)

Do you have a favorite musical performance? 

To be honest, musicals have only recently become a genre that I enjoy. This is totally attributed to my wife. She loves them and introduced me to many great ones like My Fair Lady, Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma! and many more. My favorites are Meet Me in St. Louis, The Producers (both versions) and The Court Jester (anything with Danny Kaye is awesome).

As for an actual performance in a film / animated movie I would say Danny Kaye in The Court Jester when he sings about being a jester. I also love all the songs and performances in The Producers (the most recent one). You could pick any from that film and I would be happy!

And for an animated performance would be the Genie in Aladdin when he sings Friend Like Me . Eric Goldberg's animation is amazing.

I love your choice to animate Dustin Hoffman's vocals from the film Hook.

I like how the twist in character plays with the direction expectations of the audience. How does the finished animation reflect on your original ideas for the audio? Concept art - Lie, Me NEVER This sho

t was a hard one. I wanted to animate something a little more over the top and crazy. I felt like I only scratched the surface with a previous shot that I had tried as a project as part of the Animation Mentor course. I did this animation in the 2 week break between classes as just a personal side project to see if I could do a better job.

I filmed a lot of video reference where I had him sitting down, standing, walking around, pacing etc etc. I liked though the idea of him starting the shot not even looking at the viewer or the person he is talking to in the scene. I also felt like him standing AND not looking at them raised his status and made him a doubly arrogant! 

I blocked out the shot and showed some people whose work inspires me (both students and mentors) and didn't get the best reaction. So I scrapped it, reshot the reference and started again. This shot was the only one where I almost gave up on it completely. Most of it though was really the idea of trying to push the intensity and the personality of the character. The way he walked, his turn, the laugh etc I redid a few times to really try and get more ideas into how he moved telling us more about his character. The stiffness in the upper chest - his whole body, neck and head feeling more connected / fused together. The limp at the start (I wore a big ski boot while doing the reference to make this feel right).

The choices of audio seems highly appreciative to the theatrical qualities found in your work. What do you look for when selecting audio to animate? 

I really look for character - something that sounds like it has a lot of personality. I also look for highs and lows in the dialogue and pacing. Something that has pauses or break is great too so that I can show the character thinking. I look for things that are not too recognizable so that I can put my own spin on it and not have the audience comparing it to the original performance. I also look for changes in emotion and tone. But most of all, something that is entertaining. 

The entertainment factor to me is most important. Every shot in the film is in there for a reason - to tell the story, to tell us about the character, and to entertain us. I also try and keep the clips fairly short. Having pieces that you can really spend the time polishing and pushing to get it to feature quality I think is much harder with 500-600 frame shots than 200-300 frame ones. 

Finally, I look for things that will complement my reel if that is the purpose of the piece. Something that is not too similar to other things I have on there, but also challenges me to work in a different style. 

Your Action Analysis blog pays many wonderful tributes to the work of Disney's Nine Old Men. Please talk about their influence on your work. 

The Nine Old Men are a huge influence I think to anyone that aspires to become a feature animator. They shaped our childhood and are a huge inspiration on our work. I was lucky enough to meet Frank and Ollie when they visited Australia and stay in touch with Ollie afterwards and that played a big part in how I thought about animation. 

For me I think I see them as a quality bar and something to try to achieve. I also love watching their animation because I feel like 2D animation is much more free to push the poses and the graphic nature of the shapes and be more inventive with the timing/spacing. These are qualities I would like to try and get more into my work as I feel that the video reference approach is of course great for acting and subtle details, but can be too grounded in reality. I would like to see animation continue to push more into why it is animated - inventive poses, timing and spacing. 

You have celebrated the works of many different American studios. What influence has your home country of Australia had on your creative practice? 

The two main influences for me in Australia were Peter Viska and Chris Kennett. Peter is an animator and illustrator who has worked on a huge number of animated TV series and children's books. He was incredibly helpful and kind - he let me punch my animation paper, he gave me an animation desk, he answered a lot of questions and he ended up becoming a co-worker on a number of projects. 

Chris Kennett was someone that I originally hired at my studio to work on a TV series pilot that I had co-created and was doing with Cartoon Network. He ended up becoming a good friend and is a constant inspiration as a character designer, animator and children's book author. 

As a fan of traditional animation, you mentioned your delight in watching the 2D pencil tests for DreamWorks, Me and My Shadow. What role do you believe 2D animation will play in your future career? 

I am extremely lucky to be working at DreamWorks on the film, Me and My Shadow as both a 2D and
CG animator. There is so much amazing talent on this film. Going to dailies is a blast to see the amazing pencil tests and CG animation being done. Its also so exciting to be drawing and doing 2D animation again. 

I think 2D will continue to play a very big part in my animation workflow. Many of the supervisors and HOCA's (Head's of Character Animation) on the films come from a 2D background. The new software at DreamWorks requires you to work on a Wacom Cintiq and drawing poses for both yourself and to share with other animators is built in. It also allows you to pencil test directly into your CG scene and show as a blocking pass for your CG animation (a workflow I used a lot at Animation Mentor). 

What's great about Me and My Shadow is that it is an idea that is perfect for animation and specifically the mixture of 2D and CG animation. The studio seems very open to pursuing more ideas like this (like we have seen in the past with the 2D sequences in Kung Fu Panda) and along with projects like Disney's Paperman, I find the future of 2D and CG working closer together to be really exciting. 

Such details as the spots of colour in the window flowers for The Trolley Song really add an extra quality to the presentation of your reel. Please talk us through some of the artwork that inspired your reel's environments. 

The backgrounds in my reel where all done based on one sad fact... I have absolutely no idea how to model anything, not even a cube, in CG! So I did the only thing I know, I drew them all. 

The main thing was I wanted to present the work in the best way, but also wanted to add to the feeling and tone of each peice. So I designed settings that helped set up and tell you a little more about the character in the shot or their backstory. The lighting and mood for me was really the most important thing as I didn't want detailed or complex backgrounds distracting from the animation (that was the job I wanted, not a BG artist!) 

I also tried to look at my reel a bit like a film overall. I tried to think of it in the terms of a colour script. I wanted there to be emotional highs and lows and the different shots to be really distinct from one another. So I made sure that the colours felt like they all came from a similar tonal palette (ie. I didn't suddenly introduce really bright candy colours for example), but changed enough from each shot so that there was not all blue or all red etc shots together. 

The Santa Elf shot I wanted it to feel warm and cosey. I wanted you to feel safe and happy with the festive feeling of Christmas because the whole piece was about contrast to what the girl was going to say. I wanted her line to be as unexpected as possible! 

The Robin Hood shots were modelled badly in 3D as I needed to have much more complicated camera moves and the character interacting more with the environment. 

The Lie Me NEVER shot was inspired by The Godfather and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in style to the colours and lighting. I wanted a more gritty feeling to this shot and added some grain and texture to it to make it feel dirty and dark after the brighter end to Robin Hood. 

The Circus Pole shot was inspired by the colours and tones from Moulin Rouge. I wanted to to feel rich in colour to compensate for the more basic rig. 

The Trolly Song was all about that first morning light in a city like San Francisco / New York which influenced the designs of the houses and trolly and was set in the late 1800's or early 1900's. After the last
two shots I wanted to end the reel on a more upbeat tone.

   

Looking through your blog, I've spotted that you had the opportunity to meet two of your Animation Mentor teachers, Pixar's Chris Chua and Disney's Chad Sellers. Please tell us about this experience. 

I've actually been lucky enough to meet with all my mentors from Animation Mentor which has been great. I got to meet Chris Chua and Victor Navone at Pixar where they gave me a tour and had lunch. It was awesome to talk to them about the projects they were working on and still hear how passionate they are about animation and films. It was also cool to hear about Chris' lunchtime group of friends who play board games at work. 

Chad was also very kind to give me a tour of Disney a few weeks after they had wrapped on Tangled. It was great to meet a lot of the team and hear about how Chad had grown up loving Disney film and was living his dream working at the studio surrounded so much history that constantly inspires him. 

My other 3 mentors were Drew Adams, David Weatherly and Sean Sexton who all work at DreamWorks. This is the most exciting part for me, being able to work alongside these guys, eat lunch, see films and hangout with them is amazing. Drew and I share a love for Disneyland that boarders upon obsession! We have made a lot of trips down there already! 

Tell us a bit about how your mentor's workflows and friendships inspired you. 

The mentors at Animation Mentor teach because they all share the same passion for animation and really want to share that knowledge. I have taken something from each of these mentors which is reflected in my workflow constantly: 

Chris' ability to simplify and distill a pose so that intention and thought is as clear as possible. Chad's notes on spacing and arcs, Drew's workflow is most similar to mine where I animate in a more straight ahead method. Dave's constant harping on about making it work from all angles (which has since saved my ass many times!) and his nit-picky notes that make me polish my work to a much higher level. Victor's notes on acting and his love of the graph editor which no longer made me scarred of it! And finally Sean who's work ethic and acting notes continues to inspire me at work everyday.

Your Robin Hood animation made it in the Animation Mentor's Student Showcase. How did you plan the environment and the path your character ran through? 

I did this animation in class 3 with Drew Adams at DreamWorks. I felt like after class 2 that I had only just started to animate all the different physical actions that I wanted to try in CG. So I made a big list of everything I would like to try and animate including pushing a heavy object, jumping a large gap, catching your balance, climbing etc. 

I then worked out a script based on these and how they could work together. I had also recently seen the original Robin Hood at an old cinema where I used to live in Melbourne, Australia on the big
screen and loved it. I felt like that would be a good theme that I could use to tie these different body mechanic actions together into a very loose story. 

I spent some time drawing out different castle and rooftop locations to work out how the different actions could take place in these settings. The restrictions from Animation Mentor was there had to be 3 shots - so only 2 camera cuts and minor camera moves ie. basic pans only. Each animation was no more than 200 frames, and a single character. 

I like having these restrictions as they give you a framework to work within. I also wanted to make sure I didn't spend to much time having the character run from place to place (so the first shot is really the only one that has running) and that each shot didn't repeat itself with the body mechanic actions. 

 

I pencil tested out each of these animations very roughly in Flash to work out the timing as I was worried I was trying to do too much in the frame limit. I also always work with paper in front of my computer as I tend to rough out the poses and push them further with a pencil rather than trying to make them work on the rig.

Since joining DreamWorks has your animation workflow evolved since your studies at Animation Mentor? 

The overall workflow has remained very much the same. The only real difference is time and software. I still shoot video reference for all my shots (I usually do this on the weekend so that I am not messing around Monday morning and loosing half a day editing it and getting that right before I start blocking). 

I also draw out the poses and test things in drawings first. I then block in stepped mode and show this to the Director in rounds or dailies. 

The time difference comes in here - at Animation Mentor there was more steps. You would show blocking, blocking plus, spline, polish etc. At work, I usually show blocking and once I am given the go-ahead and made any revisions from the supervisors etc, I spline and do a first polish pass together. 

I then show what is called 'close to final' where I am looking for the Director to approve and say my shot is 'Auto-Final' which means he is happy with the acting and performance and I don't have to show him again. I then do another few polish passes whilst showing the supervisors to get final from them as well. 

The other difference is the software. DreamWorks has their own proprietary software called EMO. After 5-6 weeks of training you start on production shots and it is very different to Maya which is what I was using at Animation Mentor. It has some great features and is missing a lot too, so that has changed my workflow in a technical sense. 

I am a big fan of your gothic illustrations released in your book, Scary Tales. Do you have plans to continue your practice as an illustrator? 

Thanks so much! Scary Tales was something I was working on just before I started at Animation Mentor and through the first 3 classes. I was missing drawing while spending so much time on the computer and wanted to work on things that were only on paper with very little digital components. I used ink and brushes and charcoal etc. It was so nice to have that escape. 

I would love to do another book and have been discussing the idea with another animator at work, so who knows! 

This gothic theme and dark sense of humour has continued into your Codfish and Graveyard animations. Why were they left off your reel? '

They were left off because they were the weakest two pieces on the reel. Codfish was replaced by the Lie, Me NEVER shot as I felt the acting and character was much stronger. Graveyard I felt was the weakest piece on the reel, and through discussion with my mentor at the time, Sean Sexton, we removed it. 

We have talked about your many different influences. How much research do you do when commencing a new project or shot? 

I do quite a bit. I look at a lot of movies for acting ideas, gestures etc. I look at comics and 2D animation for layout and staging, I read about the time or place the movie or character is from.

 

For example, the Trolly Song shot I knew I wanted to do something in the late 1800's time wise. So I spent quite a bit of time researching the costumes and women's etiquette of the era to get ideas on how the character would move. Something that I really liked was the idea that women in this time period would wear corsets. This would really restrict the movement, especially the mid section and breathing

So I deliberately reduced the amount of movement and made the middle section of the torso quite stiff, having most of the bend come from the hips and a little from the shoulders, but none in the centre. I also made the breathing in the upper chest only and not from the belly. 

Lastly, is there any advice you would like to share with your fellow animators? 

Animation takes a huge commitment in time and passion. You really have to love it and live it to want to get to the point where you make it your career. My three pieces of advice would be: 

- If you are going to animate, pour your heart and soul into it. Work as hard as you can and put everything into it. Use your time wisely and efficiently. Turn off any distractions. I would disconnect the internet and my phone while in Maya so that while I am at my desk I am only animating, not chatting, surfing or writing emails. If you work hard it will show in your work and people will notice. 

- Make real connections and contacts in the industry and animation community. So many of the jobs at the major studios and smaller ones too are from recommendations and referrals. Get to know people working at these studios as your mentors through school or at events like CTN. But don't make it about them helping you or giving you notes on your work. Just get to know them, talk to them, celebrate with them by sending an email when their latest film comes out etc. They will take notice of your work anyway and want to help you if you follow point 1! Also- find people you admire and trust at school or online and show them your work. Get real feedback all the time. During Animation Mentor a few of us started a study group and got together every week and really tore each others stuff apart. It helped so much. 

- Finally, surround yourself with people who believe in you and understand your goals. Many friends you have will think you are crazy... "You don't want to go out, you want to just stay in and animate?!?" My wife Michelle is my biggest supporter and believed in me when I thought the goal of working at DreamWorks was not going to happen. Having someone like that who understands you need to work on Friday night and all weekend and is pushing you to succeed makes all the difference. 

She even slept on the floor beside my desk one night to keep me company. She would read to me when I was going from stepped to spline in my shot late at night. She moved across the world so I could work at my dream job. A HUGE part of the reason I have been able to work at DreamWorks and achieve this goal is because of her. Find your Michelle!

Arthurnal interview - June 2011

Hello there,

One of my earliest interviews, showcases a beautiful workflow. Animator Arthurnal, won with his animation ''Toilet please'', exploring a beautiul Looney Toons style of animation.

 

Hope you all enjoy!

Arthurnal portfolio

Tell us about some of your hobbies in your free time. I understand you are a musician?
I always watch animation movies or clips from many different websites such as 11 secondclub and spungella.com. I prefer to watch comedy clips because I'm funny guy. Believe it or not I can laugh all day! If I have a free time I love to play both the piano and guitar. I also play the mouth organ. The piano I started playing about a year ago and I have played the the guitar for about 10 years. Those are my two favourite music instruments. 

When did you first realise you wanted to become an animator? 

Actually I graduated in Physics but I love animation so much. During my free time, I take every opportunity to practice animation further. I realised I wanted to become an animator when I saw Veerapatra Jinanavin's work. It inspired me to become an animator also. To view the first link I saw of his work, please click here 

You work at The Monk Studios in Thailand, what is your country's animation community like there? 

It's a growing community, with many young people wanting to become animators. Many are studying animation classes in university.

What is your typical day at the studio? 

I prefer to animate action or comedy shots rather than acting shots. My supervisor likes to assign the action shots to me. I always learn from my work and co-workers. If I have free time I like to walk around the studios to relax and take a look at another person's work. Its give me many good perspectives because we can share ideas all the time. 

What were your first thought's upon hearing Emmanuel's audio clip? 

At first I fell in love with his sound, it's a good and beautiful melody. When I first heard his music I pictured someone running around to find something in the funny way. A toilet idea come from my real life, I've experienced something like this. I believe the toilet story can make the people laugh easier because when you want to use a toilet everything in your life is a rush. 

Tell us about your animation process. 

At first I want to put a rough outline of the idea. I do it to find timing and ensuring that the story is what I want to do and that it flows with the music. When I have a simple polygon to animate, it's easy to fix and change everything. 

These are the other stages my animation went through. Between the third Blocking and the Blocking Plus movie clips, a little of the stage is changed and Joe goes from just knocking on doors to also pulling the door, which I found helped to add more force. This is a change recommended by my mentor. 

The style of the environment really adds to the story, creating a world the audience can believe in. It really is a beautiful render.What influenced the staging of Joe's story? 

I would like to show something simple in this movie because it's an easy way to understand what action is happening. Also the simple scene really pushes Joe's appeal. 8.Your animation has lots of really beautiful animation tricks. For instance on frame 52 the head pops off and on frame 367, Joe spouts a second pair of legs. When initially creating your story idea, was this something you wanted to include from an early stage? Yes, it was. However, I think that this is my first time to do animation in this style. When I started working on the piece, I didn't feel like the actions were really happening yet, so I found new inspiration by watching Tom and Jerry and Looney Tune movies. This really helped get that 2D cartoony classic style into my work. 

Would you like to talk a little bit about some of those tricks? 

On frame 52 the head pops off because Joe's head look like a ping-pong ball. When I finished animating that. I felt that it looked quite funny, so I added Joe's full body stretch. On frame 367 or some frame similar you can see Joe has 4 legs. I imported a second version of the rig to my scene and then I offset the keys, hiding the whole body except the legs. 

As Joe steps around the screen, he squashes and stretches through some beautifully-appealing arcs. Talk a bit about how you think about arcs in your animation. 

I like to play with clear and beautiful arcs as a means to entertain the audience. Inbetween frame 160-170 Joe steps with a big arc because I have so few frames to move Joe from the first door to the third door to fit the music. If I do not do it I would not have enough time make that action happen. 11.What are you most proud of in this shot? I think I'm proud most of the first shot where Joe runs into the scene. Its cartoony style really stands out and sets the scene. 

Talk about one or two parts of the e-Critique that enhanced/expanded on the ideas you had originally set out to animate.

Big thanks to Wayne Gilbert, I found his Critique really useful to me to improve my work. In particular, I found enjoyed his notes on storytelling 

On the 11 second club forum, you note Veerapatra Jinanavin as your mentor. Please share with the community two pieces of advice he gave to you. 

Veerapatra Jinanavin (or KEKO as everyone in Thailand knows him) He is my inspiration. Currently, Veerapatra is one the best animator in Thailand. He has a good attitude and very friendly. He hopes to drive the animation industry of Thailand to step up to international level, so he shares everything he knows with people who are interested. He taught me everything about animation and showed me how to become a good animator. 

The three big influences he had on this clip were 

1. He helped me with the staging, 

2. Including the camera movement to add make the shot look more dynamic 

3. Helped me to make a bigger action on Joe in certain parts. 

Do you have any advice of your own you would like to share with the community? 

Animation is something we need to learn all the time. Try to do the best as you can. Practice and learn from professional or from your own inspiration. The main thing you have is to remain optimistic and should have a positive attitude and then accept the opinions of others. It is an easy way to help you become a good animator.

Andrew Chesworth Interview - December 2011

Hello guys and gals,

In December 2011, Andrew Chesworth won his second competition in a row. His expert handling of anatomy invite the audience into a world, where a young kid is cautioned of the dangers that await in the mountain scene. 

Andrew's second win provided the opportunity to conduct a double interview, something I have dreamed of doing since taking the reigns from Eric Scheur. I enjoyed the challenge and wish Andrew many warm thanks for his role in making this happen.

It was also of great excitement to hear BJ Crawford will be working on Andrew's new short, The Brave Locomotive, together with other great artists.

Hope you all enjoy!

Artist portfolio
Winning Entry

Please talk a bit about your interview for your role at Disney.
I actually didn't interview traditionally. I had applied via snail mail and through the website in March of 2011 but was followed up with an e-mail rejection notice in April. When they were looking for candidates for the Fall 2011 Talent Development Program, my friend Ke Jiang (an amazing modeler at Disney and former classmate from MCAD) pointed out my work to the recruiter (who wasn't aware that I had applied earlier that year), and I think that's why I got the call.




Can you share anything about your daily experience at the studio.

I love it. There is always something exciting happening, whether it's an animation department meeting, a presentation by Mark Henn, dailies with Rich Moore (the director of the feature film Wreck-It Ralph), and getting a lot of really exciting animation assignments to work on. The people are so fantastic and so inspiring, and it's a privilege to be exposed to so many talented and influential individuals.

You have mentioned already seeing an improvement in your work since joining the studio. Please expand upon this.
Seeing my work in context alongside the work of the other animators here has its own way of informing me where I must improve. Also, just talking shop with the senior animators clarifies areas that need to evolve. There is an osmosis of learning in seeing everyone's approach to animating, and with that much social overlap there is bound to be a lot of rapid collective learning. You tend to feel like your work is very naked and exposed to dozens of pairs of discerning eyes... and you adapt pretty quickly to try to avoid basic criticisms so that the more sophisticated aspects can be evaluated. Working here has also allowed me to have aspects of my work described to me in conversation by other artists in a manner that didn't happen until I came here. It's easy for me to see how house styles develop naturally in a studio, with so many artists trying to keep up with each other.

I believe building a good partnership is key in a mentor- student relationship. Please comment and talk a bit about studying under Malcon Pierce.

Haha, sense of humor plays a big role, and there is no lack of comedy involved while learning under Malcon. He makes everything very approachable, and he knows how much I respect his feedback and his ability to zero in on elements of the work that can be improved. He and I both respond to very graphic aspects of animation, and it's a language I am very comfortable with. Malcon is equally in touch with characters' personalities, as well as just what's plain entertaining to watch on screen.

In our last interview, you talked about receiving advice from Eric Goldberg. Eric's strength of posing on the Genie is something that remains complex to achieve in 3D. Please talk a bit about the advice he has provided to you.
The few times that I have been privileged enough to interact with Eric at work have been very enlightening. I recall his feedback on my Palm Springs short - he stressed loosening up my poses and motion a bit, to get as much softness and pliability in the forms as possible. He also advocated the classic principle of pushing contrast in characters' motion. He cited that the femme fatale in the short could have been animated a bit softer and curvier in her movements to match her physical form. The short is so fast that the characters tend to rubber-band snap into a lot of their poses to achieve the storytelling, and in that process there were possibilities of movement unexplored to further differentiate the characters. The principles he is talking about apply to any medium of animation or film acting if you look at the basic ideas.

You also mentioned your New Year's Resolution was to animate in a different style than you have used before. Please talk a bit about the animation styles you admire and may wish to explore.
Speaking of Eric, I am always looking for opportunities and legitimately good reasons to do assertively broad animation. I absolutely love the Disney aesthetic of the 1940s from films like Pecos Bill, Little Toot, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Song of the South. I have an almost insatiable desire to watch animation with that kind of broad appeal and boldly defined personality, and those are the types of films that not only made me want to be an animator, but to draw. That said, I have just as much room to explore the more subtle, naturalistic side of animating that I haven't before. Artists tend to progress their styles gradually, and I want to take logical risks that feel like they are coming from a place I have been before, but are leading to somewhere that I haven't been. That is starting to sound a bit abstract and high-concept... but I think you get the idea. I think a bold experiment would involve giving myself a visual limitation of some kind. An example (and not that I necessarily will do this) would be to do a piece of work in a Picasso-inspired cubist style, and still try to imbue character and clear narrative in the animation.

Your personal blog presents some beautiful production artwork for ''The Brave Locomotive''. Please introduce your short film to the 11 Second Club community . 

 

The Brave Locomotive (pictured above) has been a project developing for a few years now, and it coalesced very quickly as something I just had to create once it entered my brain. It's an eight-minute short set in the old west (the late 1890s to be exact) about the friendship between a 'little engine that could' named Linus, and his endearing but opportunistic engineer, Henry. A railroad baron from the east buys out Linus' tiny railroad, and Henry falls in love with the Baron's daughter Scarlet and is promoted to drive Samson, the new heavyweight super-locomotive (and Linus' steely replacement.)

The film is narrated through song by a talented female trio akin to the Andrews Sisters in the vintage boogie woogie style, and the music was composed and conducted by Tom Hambleton. All of the base track for the film has been recorded and put through editorial to my storyboards. It's a very fast-paced film that covers a lot of big story points, and the motivating force was the desire to tell a classic story of a fractured friendship through a style of music and broad animation I am very passionate about.

Disney's 'The Brave Engineer'', 1950

Friends in the know have picked up on the American Legends vibe of the film. The film is mostly in 2D (specifically the human and fully organic characters) and animated digitally, with a lot of hybrid CG techniques to realize all of the highly caricatured anthropomorphic train animation.

In the next few months, the trailer for the film will be online, along with a Kickstarter page to further advertise and acquire artists to animate sequences on the film. BJ Crawford, Justin Weber, Amir Avni, Chang Dai and Joe Merideth are already committed to scenes in the film, and each animator is cast to a scene and character appropriate to their animation style.

Have you visited Ollie Johnston's train ''The Marie E''?
Sadly, no. My life is not yet complete. I can't truly call myself a Disney train enthusiast until I have done so.

Ollie Johnston's ''The Marie E''

(Please click here to watch a clip of John Lasseter making a dream happen)

Please talk a bit about your hobbies outside of animation.
I play tennis, and I go running outdoors a lot, because they are physical activities I enjoy tremendously that allow me to forget how much time I spend sitting at a desk. I also find tennis an exciting sport to watch, because of how individual the narrative is. You are watching an exciting kinetic drama unfold in real time. When I was in high school and playing the sport competitively, professional tennis was going through a very exciting time. Sampras and Agassi were approaching retirement and still playing very competitively, newcomers like Andy Roddick and the Williams sisters were making a huge dent, and I was loving following all of it. When the animation bug really took over my life, I didn't follow the professional sport as religiously (especially after Sampras retired), but to this day I always light up when there's a tournament on TV.

Looking at your portfolio, you had the experience to direct commercial animation. I particularly enjoyed Golden Grammies. Please talk about balancing the opportunity to explore character while working with the budget and brief constraints that commercial animation presents.
I think the entire timeline for Golden Grammies from start to finish was just under a month. It was a breakneck and completely fun experience. I did the character designs, and also supervised the storyboards from a scenario concept by Aaron Quist. Modelling was accomplished by other artists at Make, and then I did a lot of the character rigging, specifically the body controls and the skin binding. That took up half the production, just building everything. I even managed to provide the voice of the tiny bespectacled Granny in the red blouse. Kevin Wisdom animated the first 15 seconds, and I animated the last 15 seconds. That was probably a week and a half of animating. The last week was polishing up the post-production and compositing.

The whole concept was that Golden Grahams was just BEGGING to have a parody of the Golden Girls as a potential mascot, and we pounced on it. Whether or not it was viable is up for grabs, but we found it pretty amusing. And somehow it got executed! With commercial deadlines, you just have to go with your gut, and I think there is something to that. It really is possible to over-think decisions in animation, and in commercials you don't have time to, so you go with what works. From a certain point of view, it's a really solid training ground for learning how to execute with confidence and discipline. There's no beating around the bush.

For production of your short film 'Mortimer and Bracket', you took upon many roles including director, writer and animator. With a focus on story and character, please talk a bit about the film and the lessons you learnt through its production.

Mortimer and Bracket

The biggest lesson for me was, the first film you make is probably not going to be very good... so get it out of the way as soon as possible! Mortimer and Bracket served that purpose for me. It lags a bit in the second act - truthfully it should probably be less than five minutes instead of eight. As a film, it really needs a chainsaw taken to the editing. And as animation, it really tries to rely too heavily on splines and not enough on great graphics images - and it shows. I don't think there are very many still frames in the film that hold up as solid complete poses, if any. It's more just a series of disconnected, amateurish moving parts. But, there were several good things about finishing a film like that essentially on my own - notably knowing how much has to go into every aspect of a production, as well as time management and budgeting assets. It was a very practical experience, and in the end the film seems to have acquired a modest viewership. But it doesn't stand up to the test of time or maturity, in my opinion, and I'm glad I made it so I could learn from it.

(To watch the film, please click here)

Do you have any ambitions to one day direct a feature?

I have at least three ideas for animated feature films that I am extremely passionate about, and would love to see realized on screen in animated form. With how far technology has come in the last few years, I'm confident they would be fantastic in either the hand-drawn or CG format, as long as they were art-directed in accordance with the tone of the story.

What was your reaction to your eCritique?
I thought it was pretty on the money. I laughed about the eye line of the little goat, because his eyes are basically pupil-less shiny black pearls. With characters like that, the head orientation is all the more important. I appreciated how much Jay is invested in his knowledge of animal behavior, and my favorite note was that regarding the prowling cat. Objectively, there was nothing I really disagreed with. I was pretty confident in most of the choices I made all things considered, and his notes about animal behavior resonated with me the most.

Jay Jackson provided some tips on animating animal behaviour. Please talk a bit about the challenges your choice of characters presented. 

Anatomy, anatomy, anatomy. I looked at a lot of reference - video, illustrations, diagrams, and written, to prepare myself as much as possible for a crash course in the two types of animals I was animating.

I made it a goal to push the contrast in weight, attitude and movement of all three characters, and despite some missed opportunities that Jay pointed out, I am pleased that that objective came through in the end. The most unusual part of the planning phase was shooting video reference of myself acting out the poses I saw in my head, and filtering that through what is possible and believable for that animal's anatomy.

December's audio clip included the challenge of a storm sound effect. Please discuss your response to this in order to create a believable environment. 
I knew I wanted something epic, and I am a pretty experienced compositor of 2D animation so I knew I wanted to feature an atmospheric environment this time around to complement the audio. I felt like my decision was a pretty literal one, and the audio easily supported my initial impulse to animate mountain dwelling animals.

You have now won two competitions in a row. What advice would you give to anyone entering the competition?
Take it seriously - treat it like a job assignment. Give yourself strict limitations, and follow them. Emphasize communication and clarity. Be unexpected but reasonable - don't force the audio to bend to your idea, bend your idea to suit what is believable within the context of the audio. The winners of the competitions I think always make something believable out of their idea, even if it's really far removed from the source material. Also, don't submit it before going through a revision pass. Show it to people who will tell you what they honestly think, and who won't just say "Looks good, man." Both of my entries received very blunt critique from respected peers, and they benefited tremendously from it. Animation is about communication and entertainment. Is it enjoyable to watch, and does it make perfect sense? If it does, fantastic! Then you can focus all of your energy on making it look really slick. But if it doesn't meet the first two criteria, then there is more preliminary homework to do.

Bouncing Ball off a wall - a Matthew Finch Tutorial

Its time to go back to basics, and bounce some balls. This time around were going to roll a ball off a high ledge, bounce it off a wall, and have it come to a settle. 

The idea of this assignment is to help polish some of your fundamentals. The energy picks up as the ball rolls off the ledge, it further picks up as it falls from the ledge to the floor. Its energy slowly is lost as it moves forward, the energy then bounces off the wall and continues to travel until it is all gone. And of course the energy of each bounce slowly is lost as well. 

Helpful Hints. I have attached 3 sample files that show the workflow I chose to use for this particular assignment. 

Notice first I work out the timing of the ball progressing forward. I have attached an image of how I did this in the graph.

Then I work out the bounces. I actually chose to mute the translation forward after I animated and just focus on each bounce as seemed appropriate. Again, this is how it looks in the graph editor.

   

 Put it together and... This example took about 10 minutes to animate. Since it is such a simple assignment, why not challenge yourself!

Here's an example of some rules to play with, the ball must roll a high ledge, bounce off a wall, and have come to a settle. You can try this with a few different balls. Heavy balls, light balls, bowling balls, ping pongs, basketballs, tennis balls etc. Take it a step further, add some subtle squash and stretch. Add some rotations. Experiment with the layout. 

Most importantly learn from this exercise! For those of you that don't like working in the graph editor and using motion trails, why not implement that into this challenge?

Also, there is plenty more information around the web on how to animate a bouncing ball, including the simple physics. I greatly encourage you to look.

Have fun and happy animating!

Max Loubaresse interview - June 2016

Hey guys and gals,

April's competition saw the top three entries all feature Malcolm from Anim School. They final ratings were so close, but Max Loubaresse pipped top spot!

I loved the cinematography, the snappy timing and certainly the comedy. My favourite moment was when Malcom's eye opens on playing dead.

I had to grab the opportunity to talk through his diverse portfolio of work. His work is loud, fearless and full of appeal. C'est beau!

----
Artist portfolio  
Ecritique
Winning Entry 

Growing up, when did you know you wanted to become a professional artist?  

As a kid I didn't like to draw. I was bad at it. 

At 14, I got a bit jealous of another guy who was popular because he was good at drawing. I had good grades and no friends. I asked him to give me one of his drawings. I copied it, came up with my own drawings from that. My grades went down but my popularity went up... a little :)   

As a teenager I was the nerdy type, no friends, playing video games, watching lots and lots of movies, reading comics and mangas... and I liked drawing. So you would think that going into an Animation school is an obvious choice. And still it took me several years to figure that out. I don't know exactly why. I just had a very limited vision of the world I guess.  

I knew I wanted to make movies when I was 17-18 yo. I had these CDs from the french Playstation magazine with short movies from the french school Supinfocom. I loved these so that's how I discovered I wanted to work in Animation. 

Is Supinfocom the school you attended? 

Supinfocom is a CG Animation school from France. They've got two buildings, one North and one South where I studied. The South Supinfocom changed its name and is now called MOPA. 

  

While I was there I rediscovered the joy of having good grades and also the pride of doing good work. The best part of a school like that is the students,  50 people who love what they do, influencing each other, challenging each other. It's something that is missing in the professional life I think.  

So, the Supinfocom degree takes 5 years to get with a graduation short movie to present at the end. Except I left school at the end of the 4th year. I failed to convince my teachers to let me do the kind of graduation movie I wanted. Because of my past work, they envisioned for me something serious and dramatic when I wanted to do something light-hearted and fun. I left and so did two of my friends. We made our own "graduation" short movie, called "Salesman Pete", outside of school during what was supposed to be our 5th and final year of studies.

Your adventures in the animation industry have taken you from France, to Australia and to England. What was it like working in these countries?  

- My professional experience in France is not very common so it would not reflect anything relevant about the country itself. Let's just say I don't see myself working there anytime soon.  

- Working in Australia was awesome for me. I spent two years there and one day, I'd like to go back. Sydney is an awesome place to live in - People are very friendly, open-minded, talented  definitely more relaxed and less superficial than in Europe. I am a very shy person and It was a lot easier for me to make friends in Australia than in Europe. 

The downside is that interesting companies and projects are more rare. Budgets are much lower too in Animation. So the quality suffers. Australia deserves more animation opportunities and backup from its government.  

- I've been working on "The amazing world of Gumball" at Cartoon Network London for more than a year now. Great experience, great people, very talented artists. I'm learning a lot and I love the show I'm working on so it helps :)  

Did you experience any language barriers and if so, how did you overcome?  

I had a decent level of English before going to Australia. So even if the first days were more stressful and exhausting because of that, it got better very quickly. Now I instinctively swear in English when I lose at video games :) 

One of my friends who came to Australia had a pretty bad level of English but he managed perfectly. People in our industry are often patient and understanding so it helps a lot. 

I enjoy the graphic nature of your work, illustrated through your personal art and also your animation. Who were your early influences?  

Random blogs, some from artists working in big companies, other from art students around the world. Cartoon network shows, Nickelodeon, stuff from Tartakovsky. My favorite style of Animation comes from Sony Animation. Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania. The upcoming "Stork" movie looks good too !  

 As a kid I was watching what was on French TV :  Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones's stuff then later the Simpsons, Family Guy.. not South Park.  

The Road Runner is probably still my favorite. I also liked Tom and Jerry, especially the episodes where they become monsters. I loved that. 

But, to be honest, my biggest influences come from live movies and tv shows. There is no animated movie in my top 10 movies.  

My favourite animated movies are : The first 10 minutes of Wall-E, the first 2/3rd of Paranorman, Nightmare before Christmas, The first half of Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, Spirited Away, Wallace and Gromit and the Wrong Trousers.  

I really liked some of the latest Disney movies. Big Hero 6, Tangled, Zootopia have the best animation ever and are fun movies to watch. Zootopia especially is a smart movie. But like I was saying to a colleague, each time I watch a Disney movie I have this wish that another studio did it instead, someone who would bring something strong and different.  

A while ago I read an interview of Tartakovsky on Cartoon Brew and he said great stuff about creating Comedy through movement, not letting CG dictate how realistic your animation should be...It's stuff I felt strongly but was not able to put into words. Brad Bird is an interesting guy too. According to him, Animation is not a genre, it's a medium. It's something that everyone seems to forget easily, even studios that I love like Laika.

I want to see a really well done adult animated movie some day... but instead we have Sausage Party... 

(for more on  Tartakovsky's work, see here)

 
How was the idea of Muffin Jack conceived?  

My friends and I did two short movies called "Salesman Pete" and "Meet Buck". These movies got the attention of the boss of ANKAMA in France. He hired all of us to work on the pre-production of an animated TV series he wanted to do. We assumed he wanted us to provide the same style and tone that we had on our short movies. Except he didn't. Because of this artistic misunderstanding, the project failed. Except instead of firing us, he had the generosity of giving us a second chance : We had one afternoon to come up with an original idea for an animated show and pitch it to him. If he liked it, he would keep us and we work on it. If not, we would all be fired.  

We came up with Muffin Jack, a super spy transformed into a ridiculous muffin by his worst enemy, who has to hide inside a bakery and mentor a young clumsy baker so they can fight crime together. The boss liked it.  

"Muffin Jack" is an idea influenced by the movies and tv shows my friends and I love : Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, The Incredibles, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon's tv shows...  

But mostly "Muffin Jack" is an idea my friends and I found during an afternoon of intense stress and fear of losing our job. And it's by far the best idea we ever had. I guess It tells you something about creativity :) 

Checking your career path, your first listed position was working as a 3d animator in March 2009. From September of the same year, you have worked in directing, storyboarding and visual development, until March 2015 where you returned to 3d animation. How have the experiences of these positions, influenced your taste as a character animator? 

Actually I also did some Modelling and texturing supervision, a lot of lighting and rendering too. I had a very diverse Professional experience so far, almost never doing the same thing twice. I liked it but also I realized that it is an issue. It means I don't know what I want to do because I want to be involved in everything. and I am not a specialist. I am great at nothing. I am average at everything. If I had to pick, my favorite jobs are Animating and Storyboarding. I like writing too...  

I think this diverse background helps me think about my animation as a tiny part of a whole process. I think about the sequence, the joke, the characters, the visual mood... The animation needs to serve everything else, while still feeling spontaneous.  

From March 2015, you have worked at Cartoon Network, as a 3d animator on the Amazing World of Gumball. Can you tell us a little about the role?  

The Amazing world of Gumball is a mix media tv show. It's mostly 2D but there's plenty of 3D characters too. And they all have a different graphic style and therefore a very broad range of animation styles too :  

Very blocky à la "Pocoyo", some in 12 frames per second to imitate stop motion, some move like real hand puppets, some have more smooth and classic animation styles, some look and move like clay and some are fully realistic dinosaurs. But all of this is done in Maya, in 3D. 3D animators have to animate props and vehicles too. There's lots of car chases and action in this show !  

It's a lot of fun :) 

Please can you talk about your workflow for the piece? For a clip so stylized, did you shoot reference?  

I didn't record any references. I don't like watching myself. But I kept acting in front of my computer while animating. No mirror or camera. I was just repeating the movements and expressions of the character again and again in order to find what I wanted. 

I also storyboarded the sequence, with camera movements and key poses correctly timed in 2D before even opening a 3D software.  

In December 2015, Anim School released Malcolm 2.0 to the public. The popularity of the rig's versatility, particularly for cartoony animation, is celebrated in its use by the top three entrants of this month's competition. Why did the rig appeal to you?  

It's free. It's very nicely done. It's got customizing options (male, female, clothing, haircuts.) and it's a human being, something that is really missing in my show-reel :) The only missing option would be to drastically change the morphology of the character in order to have a short, tall, muscular, fat, skinny guy or gal.  

What was your first reaction to the eCritique was provided by Dave Burgess, Head of Animation, on Dreamworks Trolls. 

Before watching the critique, I was surprised that I won the first place, or even that I was in the top three. I honestly still think some other animations were technically much better than mine. The people who commented on my video spotted its weaknesses immediately.  

So when I watched the eCritique, I was expecting a more harsh critique. In the end it wasn't that bad :) It was very, very useful feedback about stuff that I felt was wrong but couldn't put my finger on it.  

I am immensely grateful for this. It's awesome ! 

Do you plan to make any changes after your Ecritique? Some animators do, some like to move forward. But if you did, I'd love to share it. 

I did fix a few tweaks already but when I look back at my animation, I find it very clumsy. I want to work on something new and integrate from the start the feedback and experience I got from doing this contest. 

On your clip's description, you've noted that is ''Inspired by true events... probably.'' What is the inspiration behind this story?  

No story at all. It's just a bad attempt at being funny. Never again:)  

One of your clip's strength your use of snappy timing. Currently working on a cartoony show myself, my boss emphasis's the importance of rhythm.  

He recently quoted Orson Wells ''Movies depend so much on rhythm. They are so close to music, closer to music than a drama of the theater, that if the sound, and the rhythm of the sound, above all the rhythm, is wrong, no image can save it.''  

What advice would you give to somebody learning to develop this in their work? 

Do you know this feeling when you watch a childhood movie and every dialogue and action seems like a melody to you ? Because you know this by heart and you can predict what's coming next. I think that's the feeling I'm aiming for when I animate. I try to know my shot or sequence so well that it becomes a part of my own experience, through repetition again and again and again. Like an actor learning its lines until they feel natural. 

I play drums. Playing music helps because it makes me want to be creative with the rhythm, experiment things I wouldn't do instinctively. The audience likes to be surprised by things that happen off tempo. I also sing the dialogue to myself like a crazy person. It helps with figuring out what's "loud" in the shot and what's "quiet". You don't want your cartoony animation to be crazy 100% of the time. It's too exhausting and superficial. You want to create contrasts, surprises, moments of pure fun and moments more subtle and sincere.