Brendan Body's Blog

John Carter Wrap

2011-12-06T06:49:00.002Z

All VFX work on John Carter is now complete and the wrap party was held last Saturday in London's prestigious Natural History Museum. Unfortunately I was unable to attend due to being on a different continent, however someone from Double Negative made a movie of the event which has enabled me to get a taste of it, I've borrowed a bit from it below.

It's especially pleasing to to hear the director, Andrew Stanton's appreciation of all the hard work the many visual effects artists put into the film. Congratulations to everyone involved, I can't wait to see the finished film.

Angle and Curve Promo

2011-12-03T23:43:00.008Z

Here's a little something I worked on before leaving the UK. It's a promotional video Craig Bardsley, Julia Goehle and myself were commissioned to make for Angle & Curve - the company that I've been told by the unbiased owner, makes the best headphones on the globe.

From start to finish it took just 10 days. We were only able to work on it for a few hours each evening so unsurprisingly it is a little rough around the edges. Craig and myself devised the story and did the animation. Julia came up with the character design as well as some key-drawing clean-up.

Due to the tight deadline it was created as simply as possible, without using colour and drawing straight into the computer using the excellent free program Plastic Animation Paper.

As my day job usually has a focus on realism and detail it was refreshing to try and tell a whole story as simply yet clearly as possible. It was also a chance to try and rejuvenate my rusty drawing skills. Hope you like it.

New John Carter Trailer

2011-12-01T06:48:00.004Z

The latest trailer for John Carter, the film I worked on for most of the last year has been released and I think this gives a much better sense of the scale of it. Hope you like it.

I'm also fortunate enough to have one of the shots I worked on feature, albeit very briefly. It's around the first ten second mark where two characters are forced into an areana at gun point.

The theatre release is scheduled 100 days away on the 9th March 2012.

Update

2011-11-19T23:23:00.005Z

It's seems to have been quite a while since I last wrote on this blog, I have been pretty busy of late. Firstly, there was an intense few months at Double Negative as we finished work on John Carter but I'm happy to say animation has now wrapped and what I saw of the film is looking very good indeed.

I have since relocated to Canada and started work at Sony Imageworks Vancouver animating on The Amazing Spider-man which is due to be released in June of next year.

As I'm now settled in over here I'm hoping I should be back to updating a little more regularly.

Me by Marlo Meekins

2011-09-14T12:54:00.005Z

A little while ago Marlo Meekins was offering to do caricatures in return for donations to help her get to a Caricature Convention in Japan. I took her up on the offer and this is result.

I'm a big fan of her work and find her style both mercilessly unique and very funny. If you're not aware of her blog you can visit it here.

Emanuele's shots

2011-08-22T17:53:00.004Z

Fellow Double Negative animator Emanuele Pavarotti has some great comparison reels on vimeo. Amazingly, I haven't seen them posted anywhere else so I'd thought I'd give them a plug here.

They show cycles and playblasts of his animation followed by the fully rendered shots from VFX projects. They give a very interesting insight to how some shots were put together, also the quality of the animation is brilliant.

Night at the Museum 2

The Wolfman

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

And the bizzarre 'Pigmy Puff' from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

More of his work can be found on his website here.

New Showreel

2011-08-04T09:07:00.004Z

The same old stuff in a slightly different order!

There is also a higher quality quicktime version here.

Anim Dailies

2011-07-20T10:52:00.006Z

This was posted on the On Animation Blog but I thought I'd also mention it.

Anim Dailies is an online animation review site created by Alfonso Sicilia, Suart Ellis, Andrea Castognoli, Brad Silby and Nathan McConnel. You can submit your reel or piece of animation and receive constructive feedback on your work from friendly professional animators.

I'm fortunate enough to know and have worked with these guys and would heartily recommend utilizing this site. They are exceedingly talented and experienced animators so if you're looking to further you animation skills, I wouldn't pass up this great opportunity to receive a free critique from a top animator.

Find them here.

John Carter Trailer

2011-07-14T15:22:00.005Z

Here's the first trailer for John Carter, the film I'm currently working on. There isn't any of my work in it, in fact they seem to be keeping almost all of the great work being done here at Double Negative under wraps for now ... I guess that's why it's called a teaser.

A Week in Crunch Part 4

2011-06-24T09:45:00.017Z

This post follows on from part one, two and three of the story, if you would like to read them first they can be found here - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Saturday Morning (hours worked = 88.5)
Submission - [V06]
6:14PM 02-Jul-10
brendanb
EL 03/07: What can we do in the time that we have? I would prefer to spend the time to hit the Rough notes, otherwise at least getting some more OS hip shifts on Soren (that would translate/overlap up through his torso, and the snake) as he stumbles through his footfalls a bit with the surprise of the impact and the mere fact that the snake is here. We just feel too locked on our mark here, so I am looking for anything to make the moment play more real at Soren's core. Also, need to continue to refine overlap on the snake relative to Soren, and snake lip sync. Soren can still have a bit more incredulous default facial, with occasional smile coming in, weight it still more toward incredulous (eyes wide, mouth agape) particularly toward the end. Copying previous notes just to track them: EL 02/07: Let's get one more pass before Rough, refine snake sync, and crank incredulous where you can, esp, with Soren's broken up, shuddering, gasping breathing. Make sure this breathing comes from his core and that the rhythm does not get too even. (time-wise, focus on the end.) The look to cam still plays odd, too defined in and out, too present (almost plays like embarrassment) Try breaking it up in steps, and spread it out longer, perhaps use body rots more in the turn as well, but trailing one step behind the head... and counter animate the snake head position back in world-space to keep the same read/ focus on her as he shifts around underneath. Also, still need more wide-eyed, jaw dropped incredulous on Soren's look to the others.

My heart sank as I saw the large amount of text next to my shot. His opening statement suggested he wasn't really happy with it, that he was just looking to for improvement in the time left and had given up on getting the shot he really wanted. I had just one day left to work on the shot. Realistically I couldn't change it very much in that time. Had I made a disastrous mess of the shot? And the snake sync note again, I'd gone through it and it looked pretty dead on in terms of timing, what was going on? Was it possible I had the wrong audio in my shot? This had happened a few times on the project, an update gets missed along the way and someone has to redo animation due to them having the wrong audio. Had I just spent 7 days animating to the wrong dialogue?

My old camera had a slight drift on it which had subconsciously given the illusion of Soren moving around more. The new one was more locked and I could see it made him look very still. My co-ordinator arranged for me to do an upload to him at lunchtime so he could see where I was at and prioritise what should be worked on. I grabbed the translate null and Soren and tried to find places where it felt appropriate to move him. This was tricky as he had to end up in the same place so that Mrs P's position would stay the same at the end of shot. So every time I moved him forward, I had to find an opportunity to move him the same distance backward. I had got the note to make him incredulous again, I clearly still wasn't getting this right. So I decided to be brave and push it as far as I could, and just have his mouth wide open for most of the shot, I also exaggerated the head shake I had in there and submitted again.

BB: have tried to loosen him up a bit, moving him back and forth to address the "locked on our mark" note, weighted expression toward open mouthed default. Hoping to spend rest of day pushing chest and snake overlap. Not sure what to do about snake sync note, Andrew and I went through it yesterday and I made some adjustments, looks pretty tight to me now. Which bit is the problem? Is it possible you have different audio?

Lunchtime Saturday 3rd July

Sumission - [V07]
1:17PM 03-Jul-10
brendanb wip rough

EL 03/07: Great progress! Sorry Brendan to clarify, the snake lip sync felt a bit steppy and off-model for Mrs. P's normal asymmetry…run it past Christian S and see if he has any pointers. Do your work today and submit Arbs for Rough approval.

Wow. My quick fixes had been enough, to lift the curse off the shot, I could now see that Soren's mouth being open affected it greatly, he now felt genuinely shocked at the Mrs P being there and his spluttering and trying to speak was working better. My crude translating around was working better than I had thought it would and made Soren feel more looser and more natural.

I fixed Mrs P's mouth shapes in a clean-up pass and that was it- the shot was done! I want to be clear that I don't think this shot is a masterpiece, when I look at it now it seems obvious to me that the shot was done quickly and has been kept relatively simple. If I had had longer I might have attempted a more dynamic and exaggerated stumble on Soren, and not keep him so side-on throughout the shot but I think for how quickly it was done it's reasonably successful. It was quite a roller coaster ride to get it out in a week. I was pleased that I had turned it around to something the animation director was happy with.

Here's the final rendered version -

And here's a progression reel of the shot so you can see how it evolved -

It's funny looking back now, at the time I felt I had to make some pretty big changes to the shot but in fact the physicality of the shot changed little from my initial sketches and first block to the final version. The intent and energy of the characters was lacking in my initial approach but this was something that was layered over the top of the action.

It's also strange to look back and remember how upset I was when I thought it was going badly. It was an intense week and the tiredness I was feeling at the time certainly was a factor but also, as an animator you have to invest a lot of yourself into your job. It's almost impossible to detach yourself from your work and put it out of your mind, or resign yourself to producing an unsatisfactory shot. Animation is a consuming occupation which can contribute to your life in positive and negative ways. After all, the fact that we care so deeply about our work is the main motivation behind working such long hours.

Thanks for reading. A huge thank you to my sister Frith for acting as editor for these posts and also to Eric Leighton who very kindly allowed me to use his notes.

I would also like to thank Spungella and On Animation for recommending this story on their blogs.

A Week in Crunch Part 3

2011-06-24T09:44:00.023Z

This post follows on from part one and two of the story, if you would like to read them first, they can be found here - Part 1, Part 2

Wednesday Morning (Hours worked = 48.5)

Submission - [V04]
9:27PM 30-Jun-10
brendanb

EL 01/07:Yep, carry on… the breathing should make a BIG difference on Soren's emotional state, act out big, broken and shuddering incredulous breaths and see how they drive your core, so the snake would be going along for the ride on some of the hits of his reactionary breathing body movement. Also, make sure the look to cam in your dead spot is a bit more incredulous, currently it's a tad on the goofy side. Soren should still be breathing at the end which would carry over into the next shot.

Cool. Looking all good I thought. Ok, so he wants the breathing to be more accentuated, that was a bit more than I was thinking but it was achievable. Looks like he’s happy with everything overall, I can start to lock things down. So I added some breathing and tied down the animation and I finished splining everything out, I felt pretty happy. I had three days left of just refining and polishing what I already had, I might even finish this shot early!

I felt I could relax a little and start to enjoy the process of animation. I always love finding places to incorporate the more traditional principals of animation to my shots even if they are in a relatively realistic style and one idea I was looking forward to playing around with was using Mr's P's body to go from straight shapes to curves. Going from a straight to a curve is always desirable in animation, it adds life and visual interest to the shot. However, there is often very little opportunity to use the idea as literally (especially in naturalistic animation) as when you have a character's body that can be simplified into a single line of action.

A straight line held for a long time would not look particularly natural for a snake so I only used it briefly, holding for just a couple of frames at high energy moments. I saw two suitable occasions - one when Mrs P. jumps toward Soren and another on Mrs P's "snatched" accent; moments that would benefit from extra energy and impact.

Another idea I was keen to incorporate involved the lip sync of the Mrs Plithiver. Lip sync is another great place in animation to experiment, I find that the character's mouth shapes must be accurate in terms of timing and the shapes must be clear, but due to something called the McGurk Effect liberties can occasionally be taken with which shapes you use.

Miriam Margolyes - The voice of Mrs Plithier

I really liked the way the actress, Miriam Margolyes, had read the part of Mrs Plithier. She had subtlety implied not only the age of the character but also added some accentuation to the 's's and 'th's of words. This gave it a nice snake-like quality which was something I wanted to emphasise.

Snakes flick their tongues out to taste the air and I wanted to incorporate this to Mrs P's character but instead of having her doing it arbitrarily I looked for places in her speech. I had started to play around with the idea in a previous shot and had found that it would occasionally work if applied to 'th' sounds even though Miriam's tongue was not visible during the reading of the line.

Shot sound file -

If you listen you can hear the nice accentuated 's' sounds as well as the 'th's in 'then' and 'this'.

Close up showing tongue flick on 'this'.

I would also have to remove the way Mrs P's body was sliding around on Soren. I'd found no other way to do this but by eye; line up one of Mrs P's stripes with a point on Soren and laboriously key every frame, using the translation of a control at the u-turn on the far side of Soren's body. However, I would leave this job to last.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday working into the animation then submitted this version with the following comments.

BB: All splined! also added breathing and changed look to camera. To come - remove sliding around in Mrs P's body. Push Soren's breathing at end of shot more. Other general refinements.

Friday Morning (Hours worked = 64)

Sumission - [V05]
9:06PM 01-Jul-10
brendanb

EL 02/07: Let's get one more pass before Rough [animation approval], refine snake sync, and crank incredulous where you can, esp, with Soren's broken up, shuddering, gasping breathing. Make sure this breathing comes from his core and that the rhythm does not get too even. (time-wise, focus on the end.) The look to cam still plays odd, too defined in and out, too present (almost plays like embarrassment) Try breaking it up in steps, and spread it out longer, perhaps use body rots more in the turn as well, but trailing one step behind the head... and counter animate the snake head position back in world-space to keep the same read/ focus on her as he shifts around underneath. Also, still need more wide-eyed, jaw dropped incredulous on Soren's look to the others.

Ok. I was hoping to have rough animation approval and that's a little more amendments than I was expecting. As I read the notes I was weighing up how long each thing would take ... snake lip sync ... hmm .. an hour or two ... more broken up breaths ... tricky ... maybe a couple of hours ... change look to camera ... an hour maybe ... then I read the part that made the blood drain from my face.... turning Soren's body toward camera! ... Uh oh ... counter animating the snake. This was bad. This was making a big change that wouldn't really work with how I had set the shot up. Turning Soren's body would expose the mess that was on the other side of him, and trying to keep the same performance in Mrs P, while counter animating her against Soren's body turn was a big job. Don't get me wrong, I thought the idea was cool. If I had the time it would have made the shot far more interesting to have Soren turn around more, but I was worried about time - I only had two days left to work on it and I still had a lot of work in terms of refining what I already had and to try and meet these other notes. I spent until lunch on this but it wasn't working out, the turn didn't look natural and I was loosing the readability of Mrs P's performance. There was some pops appearing and other unwanted movement coming out of her counter animation. I felt I had to give up. I hate not meeting the notes I'm given, I felt awful but with such a tight deadline and no room for movement I felt I had no choice. I spent the rest of the day addressing the other notes. I then got a new camera from the lensing department at 5.00pm and I submitted the following animation with these apologetic notes -

BB: new camera, spent a few hours trying to rotate Soren's body and counter Mrs P. but in vain, sorry, would need a couple of days for this. Broke up the head turn to hopefully feel more natural and changed expression. Tweaked Mrs P's lip sync, tried to push breathing a bit more, pushed jaw dropped expression to others at start.

I had just one day left on the shot, if Eric didn't like this new version, there would be little time for me to remedy it. I was now feeling extremely run down which meant my emotions were heightened, at times I felt hopeless and upset that I seemed to be failing at this task, all the worse as it seemed to be going so well just a few days earlier.

Part 4

A Week in Crunch Part 2

2011-06-24T09:42:00.017Z

This post follows on from part one of the story, if you would like to read it first it can be found here - Part 1.

To explain our review process on Legend of the Guardians at this time, our Animation Director was working remotely from LA while we were working in a different time zone in Sydney, Australia. We would send a movie of our work off to Eric Leighton in the evening with some notes that stated what we'd done and where we felt we were with the shot. Then Eric would review it during his daytime and send his notes back to us so we would have them when we arrived at work in the morning. He would then be available for questions, clarification and additional reviews via video link until around our lunchtime.

Publicity shot of Eric Leighton (left) with Ralf Zondag, Co-Directors of Disney's Dinosaur.

Although my idea for the shot seemed to work to my eyes I was a bit nervous about Eric's reaction, I had not had a chance to discuss in detail what I had planned for the shot. What I was proposing was quite extreme and there was a chance he wouldn't like it at all. He might feel that the embrace by Mrs P was too nimble for an elderly character or that the hug felt like a constriction. I thought there was a strong chance I would have to start again with only 6 days left.

Monday Morning (hours worked = 21)

I got to work on Monday and opened the notes from Eric to find just four words, "I need input here" next to my shot number. I wasn't sure what this meant but it didn't sound good. I wrote to the sequence lead and the co-ordinator a slightly panicky email -

Eric's notes for fy04_143 are "I need input here". I'm scared. Doesn't
sound like he likes it very much. Shall I hold off working on it for
now? Maybe he was hoping for something closer to the old version?

AAARRRGGGHHHH!

Brendan

It turned out that I'd neglected to submit my comments on the shot and Eric just wanted to get an understanding of what my intentions for the shot were before passing comment. Andrew, who had also just seen it submitted some comments for Eric, I don't have the exact words but he stated that it was my first pass block, he liked it but felt like Mrs P's collision with Soren needed more impact and Soren should stumble around after being hit.

This was a good idea to add, it had been the proposed that Twilight and Digger's home was something of a bachelor pad with entangled roots all over the floor, to have Soren stumble would accentuate this.

Monday Lunchtime
Submission - [V02]
2:37AM 28-Jun-10
brendanb
EL 28/06: Very interesting and cool first pass, I love the aggressive move from the snake… but totally agree, we need much more impact on Soren, both physically and emotionally. Physically, want the whole tripping backwards over the furniture thing, really shocked and taken by surprise. Emotionally he must be absolutely incredulous (as the audience will be) at the supreme serendipity of this situation, looking at the snake (and out to the room) with joy, shock and absolute disbelief.

He liked it! Or at least was willing to go with the overall idea. That was a relief. I had to add some stumbling which would be hard but at least I wouldn't have to start over. For the rest of the day I tried to imply a stumble at the start, I increased the amount he was pushed back, which meant I had to adjust the camera as well. I had a tender moment in the previous version at the start, I removed this as it was going against the idea of being shocked and taken by surprise. I also tried to add a bit more surprise into his facial animation and added more breakdowns to define the movement I envisaged. I also tried to get Mrs P's accents affecting Soren, trying to keep him loose while this excited snake talked at him. I submitted this new version with the following notes.

BB: increased Soren's range on the knock back and tried to imply his
stumble with a head turn to look where he's going (will hopefully be
clearer once in rough [animation]). Added a bit more disbelief to Soren's facial
animation and included a look out to the room. Felt like we were loosing
energy in the middle section so added the idea that Mrs P. keeps pushing
Soren back and shaking him with excitement as she says her second line
(again hopefully will be clearer once in rough).

Tuesday Morning (hours worked = 35)

Submission - [V3]
5:54PM 28-Jun-10
brendanb

EL 29/06: EL BLOCK APPROVED pending [render with motion blur] so we feel forward progress, but all intent notes apply, anything to point at the incredible, absolutely insane serendipity of the moment (head shaking, gasps, broken up breathing, starting to say something and freezing/sputtering in disbelief, more looking out to the room, etc, etc) Brendan I think you have a good feel for this, so mostly the note is carry on and give us as much as you can in the time that you have!

Ok, he had approved the block of it and felt like I was on the right track but obviously I still wasn't getting enough energy and hitting the brief quite yet. However, my co-ordinator submitted a render of the latest animation. It wasn't very different but I had worked into the stumble a little at the start. I received these notes.

Tuesday Lunchtime

Submission - [V3.5]
2:49AM 29-Jun-10
brendanb

EL 29/06: EL BLOCK APPROVED. Very cool progress on this one.

Good news indeed, he had seen my latest version and was happy with how it was going, I felt like I could relax a little, now it was just a matter of fleshing it out and refining. I was also at the point where I was trying not to work into anything too far in case Eric might want something different, I really wanted him to sign off on the overall movement, I hoped the breathing, head shaking and spluttering could be ideas that I could layer-in while keeping the overall staging of the shot the same. When I submitted the shot that night I tried to hint that it would be great to get Eric to sign off on the staging so I could move forward.

BB: Wip rough - have splined and worked into stumble, also added head shaking, trying to talk, etc. Still to add breathing and splined facial. If you're happy everything is here I can start to tie down and finesse.

At this point the late nights were beginning to take their toll, I was very tired but relatively happy, I felt it was going well. Maybe the tricky assignment I'd been given wasn't going to be as tough as I'd feared but little did I know what was in store ...

Part 3

A Week in Crunch Part 1

2011-06-24T09:40:00.032Z

To try and give a bit of insight into the life of a professional animator, namely mine, I've decided to write about a week during the end of my previous project - the animated film Legend of the Guardians. As I began to write and it became rather extensive, as is often the case, I've cut it into a series of four posts which I'll upload every Monday for the next three weeks. I’m hoping this will make an interesting story for you to follow, give you an insight into what working life can be like and give you an idea as to how I work. I call it 'A week in Crunch'.

'Crunch time' is the last couple of months at the end of a project. It usually involves very long hours and working 6 or even 7 days a week. There is a high level of stress and everyone gets tired and grumpy, ill, dishevelled and generally worn out. Work pretty much consumes your brain, it's all you do so it's all you talk about and although incredibly tired, you often can't get to sleep at night for thinking of it. However, it can also be quite an exciting time as well, things come together very quickly and everyone can start to see the end of the project in sight. The film you may have been working on for years is finally almost finished!

I should make it clear the level of hard work I talk of was not unique to me, everyone around me was working equally hard during this time. I'm also not trying to criticise the animation industry or the faults in the work practices the animation companies employ. Generally at the start of a project, time is more flexible and there is much less stress. The push at the end of a project is almost always necessary and part of the job of an animator.

Another motivation for writing this is that I find there are many unrealistic examples which show the animation process as a smooth, seamless evolution from blocking to working into the animation then to polishing. In my experience the reality of the process is rarely that straightforward. Occasionally you'll get a shot for which you and the animation director are totally in sync, which you face no technical obstacles and the journey of shot production is a smooth one. More often than not it's a balancing act - you are trying to move the shot closer to a finished state whilst incorporating the ideas the animation director has for the shot. At the same time as battling with any technical problems you may have, trying to progress your own ideas and wanting to make it look as good as possible. All of this with a deadline looming. You have to stay flexible, and willing and able to make large changes very quickly.

All notes given by the animation director are real and all events are true to the best of my recollection.

A shot for you ...

The deadline for animation on Legend of the Guardians was 18th July 2010 but we were delivering the large portions (or spools) of the film before that. As the first spool delivery approached, animation for it was to be finished by Saturday 3rd July. The following story charts my week leading up to this deadline - from Saturday 26th June to the end of Saturday 3rd July ... which technically is 8 days and not a week but who's counting. During these 8 days I worked 98.5 hours, starting at 8.30am each day and staying late (past 6.30pm) every night, working past 12am on a couple of occasions.

I was a lead animator on the project with my own team, however there was a sequence for that first spool that, because of unforseen curcumstances, was in danger of running out of time which belonged to another team. Unfortunately crunch time is also when things start getting brutal, it's horrible to take shots away from an animator but sometimes that's the only way they're going to get done on time. There were a few shots in the sequence that the animation director Eric Leighton needed executed differently and the film's production crew were not confident they would be completed in time. It was decided that the senior and lead animators should be reassigned to these shots.

At the end of production like this there is usually some last minute hiring, animators brought in and thrown into a production, forced to very quickly adapt to the animation style, working methods, rigs and characters. It's very much a sink or swim situation and it's terribly unfair not to be given time to settle in. The shot I was given was re-assigned from an animator who was hired late in the project and had little time to get up to speed. I had worked on the production for over a year and a half by that time and therefore I was comfortable with the tools and the style of animation required. I had mixed feelings about being in this position, I felt very fortunate to be one of 'go to' animators on the project, someone the production felt could be trusted with complicated shots with tight deadlines but at the same time it’s difficult to be given another animator's shot. I've had shots taken away from me, especially earlier in my career, and it is always unpleasant and hard not to take personally.

A later shot from the scene showing Digger and Twilight with Mrs Plithiver and Soren in the foreground.

The scene in question, the introduction of Twilight, had been greatly affected by some last minute modifications to the story. One major change to the film that affected the scene was the decision that the hero (Soren's) parents should not be killed during the film. Up until a few months before the end of the film's production the story had Soren return home to find his family's hollow burnt and abandoned. It was a sad but very beautiful and powerful scene. This was also where Soren was reunited with his snake nurse mate, Mrs. Plithiver (or Mrs P.) who would then accompany him on his mission to find the mythical Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Now that Soren's parents were not killed and he didn't return home, there was the dilemma of how to reunite Soren with Mrs P. As removing her would have impacted too much on the rest of the film. It was decided that she could be reintroduced in this sequence by Twylight bringing her into his home as food for him and his hollow-mate Digger. Who had just met Soren and offered him shelter.

Reunion between Soren and his parents at the end of the film

Despite this the animation director Eric Leighton and lead on that sequence, Andrew Hunt had turned it into a great scene. The character of Twilight was strong, the animation was really beautiful and it was getting some great laughs in reviews. When I found out I was to animate a shot within it but had only a week to complete it I was anxious of the schedule but thrilled to be involved in such a great scene.

The shot I was given had just two characters, Soren, an owl, and the snake - Mrs P. Snakes, however, are notoriously hard to animate, their movement is obviously very different to other land based animals so Mrs. P's animation was going to be tricky - (for those interested in the technicalities) there were two modes to her rig, a straight forward FK mode which was incredibly hard to animate in anything other that a close up head shot or an IK mode which was easier in full body shots but had a one major draw back; she would be constrained to a path by her head but there was no way of locking down any point of her body which made it slip around as her head was animated, and the controls along that path would easily gimbal and cause pops in her motion. It had also proved hard to get appealing poses from her.

Picture from previous version

When I picked up the shot the previous animator had played it much as it was in the original, dead-parent version - a tender, warm moment between Soren and Mrs P. This worked in the original story as the shot was quiet and underplayed and the reunion was against a background of tragedy.

This new reunion was very different, firstly, it's obviously highly unlikely - To be introduced to a new character who is also carrying an unrelated character we have previously met. The animation director Eric Leighton suggested that instead of hiding away from the fact that this was a tenuous plot point and risk pulling people out of the story and ruining the illusion of the film, we should accentuate the serendipity by showing how shocked and amazed the character's reactions to the situation were. It was even suggested that we add a small knowing look to camera to further highlight that Soren couldn't believe that this was happening. Secondly, there was the extra complication of Mrs P changing gears through the shot, she started off in happy amazement then her emotions turned at the end of shot to anger at Twilight for capturing her.

Shot sound file -

transcript -

Mrs P : "It can't be! Every day I've been out looking for you and Kludd and then this ... to be snatched up by this monstrosity."

Planning

I decided to be bold. If Eric wanted a big impact I'd try and give him one. I reckoned that if Mrs P was just about to get eaten but suddenly found a close friend, the exact close friend she was out looking for when she was captured, then she would probably launch herself at Soren and squeeze him tight. I thought it would be funny to have her shaking him with excitement as she tried to tell him what had happened. I also wanted to try and add some fun ideas in there, the look to camera for example. Also, throughout the film there had been moments when Mrs P. had hugged some of the owls but it had always been challenging to achieve, as snakes in the wild sometimes eat owls, it always felt like the snake was about to constrict the friend she had in her grasp. I wanted to play with this idea, firstly I wanted to make sure the initial grasp of Soren read as a hug and not an attack. But then I wanted her to give Soren a squeeze as she became angry, my idea was that on the accent in "snatched" she would be so focused and angry at Twilight that she would not realise that she had accidentally held Soren too tight. After a bit of brain storming I drew these rather crude sketches just to get something down on paper and out my head.

These thumbnails were done very quickly and are very rough. There is little focus on the details of pose and facial expression, they were mainly used as a means to visualise the physical movement of the snake throughout the shot. I've tried to make them a little clearer by adding notes and colour.

Basic Poses

I spent Saturday morning finishing off a previous shot and started this shot around lunchtime on Saturday 26th July. Firstly I tried out some poses to see what I could achieve with the snake, each pose was quite laborious to create, each node along the path had to be separately translated and rotated into position. I had to find out if my idea would work at all. I wanted to see if it would be possible to get the snake wrapped around Soren and position her so that she would still be able to look at him to talk to him.

After some trial and error I came up with this, which proved it was possible at least. Mrs P's face would be very close to Soren's but this could work out well as she would be so excited to see him that she would lose all concept of normal personal space. The idea was that eventually Mrs P's body would look like it was supported by Soren's wing, however, I left some space around this area as I wasn't exactly sure where Soren's wing and shoulder would be. The tail has also been left rather ambiguous.

Next I tried a pose were she would be looking at Twilight with her body ready for the accidental constricting of Soren. I could only make one coil and it wouldn't quite fit round the widest part of his body, so I had her squeezing more around his shoulders / neck, but I thought this would still work.

Then I created a rough pose for Mrs P. hugging Soren which would be viewed from his left. This took quite a while but finally it felt almost right - warm and friendly, hopefully it would not be confused for constriction of Soren. All these poses were cheated to a degree, there was an area on Soren's left hand side were Mrs P wasn't supported by anything and to get her wrapped back around I had to make a sharp u-turn there which created a rather ugly shape. But I figured that as the camera was on the other side of Soren we would never see this, and I'd stage the scene so Soren wouldn't turn his body too far towards the camera.

Unattractive U-turn in Mrs P's body I would keep hiden from the audience.

Finally I created the starting positions for the characters which would closely match the position we had last seen them in. I was reasonably happy with these as basic story telling poses and so reordered them, added a move back on Soren and a few more poses at the end for Mrs P dismounting Soren. I also had to create a rough camera for the scene, the original one was still and focused around where Mrs P started. With this camera she would immediately jump out of shot, so I added a tilt up and pan to follow the action. It wasn’t usual practice to create our own cameras on this production and it would have to later be refined by the studios lensing department. I made a capture of my work so I could view it in sequence. Although very rough, I was happy with my progress. I didn't submit this for review but this is where I finished up that Saturday night.

I don't always work in stepped keys but as I needed to get an idea across fast and due to how long it took to pose Mrs P, it seemed like the best option.

With such a tight deadline it was a relief to have something in the scene and I was happy with how my idea was progressing. On Sunday I tried to refine these poses a bit, add some breakdowns and some basic facial animation to help sell what the characters emotions would be. I then submitted it for review on Sunday night.

But I would have to wait until the next day to find out what the Animation Director thought of it.

Part 2

Guardians Flight

2011-04-27T10:55:00.014Z

Today I thought I’d talk a little more about the flight design in Legend of the Guardians as I feel this was one of my main areas of influence on the film. Let's start by looking at the flight cycle I created for the character of Soren.

The style of the film was quite realistic so I attempted to create movement that was true to nature. However, I've not sought to copy a barn owl's flight. Barn owls wings are very stiff so I looked at the flight of other birds of prey, like eagles to make Soren's flight a little more dynamic and powerful. I've also tried to make sure it works from all angles so that it can be used as a starting point in any type of shot. The amount of vertical motion is less than you find in nature, this is because many of the flying shots were close-ups or mid shots where the characters were talking so, for this reason the vertical motion has been toned down. In a wide shot the ups and downs needed to be exaggerated. As the hero, Soren's flight cycle is fairly standard, you'd probably call it the 'vanilla' of flight cycles, a quirkier character would have a more distinctive flight.

However, this monotonous and rigid cycle is obviously not how you'd want any real bird to fly but once this cycle has been created, it's fairly straight forward to get something more organic -

This is an early test I did for the character of Nyra taking a similar cycle to the Soren one above. In this animation I've broken up the cycle by adding glides, I've also found opportunities to bank the body. I've done it quite severely here to give the impression she is honing in on some fast moving and erratic prey. As you can see we can start to get something quite naturalistic by just doing this. The head, however remains locked, maybe a little too much, this test was left quite rough, if I were to work into it further I'd probably loosen up the head a little, add further asymmetry to the wings as well as break the tail away from the body and add some flutter to the ends of the feathers.

As I mention in my bird flight notes, smaller birds fly differently to bigger birds in a number of ways but importantly below a certain size, birds will abandon a conventional flap/glide pattern and instead flap in short bursts, then pull their wings in completely for a time. This is called a bounding flight pattern and I was keen to use this to accentuate the small size of Gylfie, a tiny Elf owl character in the film.

The following movie shows the original opening to the film which was completed after production on the film. It is available as an extra on the recently released Blue Ray Disc of the film. It shows the ancient and mythical 'Battle of the Ice Claws' - a hostile encounter between the evil Pure Ones and the Guardians. In case your interested, I animated the shot when the two leaders of the armies - Lyse of Keil and Metalbeak first come together.

As well as making different cycles for the different characters of the film we also wanted to show a difference in the overall flight of the good Guardian owls and the evil Pure Ones. The Pure Ones are the villains, hell bent on enslaving the owl kingdom and see themselves as a master race, there were clear parallels between them and human fascist dictatorships and we wanted to reinforce this where ever possible.

The owls in army of Pure Ones are controlled and heavily suppressed and so fly in rigid formations. The shape of their wings is different to, we kept them higher and more angular, almost suggesting the Eagle motifs of the Nazis.

I also referenced frigate birds who have a reputation for robbing other birds and have a menacing wing shape, and hold their bodies low under their bent wings.

To contrast this we wanted the Guardians to have a more natural owl wing shape that was softer and rounder. The guardians also fly in a more broken formation which subtly symbolises their freedom from suppression.

In case anyone hasn't seen it, most of the details of how I approach flight can be found on my bird tutorial page here.

More Subtext ... and Top Gun

2011-04-17T23:17:00.013Z

After my recent subtext post I came across a couple of humorous references to subtext which I though I'd share and talk about to hopefully help clarify what it is and how it applies to acting for anyone still unsure.

The first clip is from The Trip, a recent BBC comedy series in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play lose versions of themselves. It's a largely improvised sitcom which follows them on a tour of expensive restaurants in the North of England. The two performers are both actors and impressionists and my favourite parts of the programme are thier impressions and analysis of famous actors their varying techniques. At the end of the following clip Steve Coogan points out an acting technique used by Richard Gere.

"Richard Gere does a very interesting technique he does in a lot of his films, not a lot of people pick him up on it. What he does is he'll listen to what someone says and then he'll smile enigmatically. He'll look away into the middle distance as if remembering something from the past, laugh about it and then return to the dialogue."

He then acts this out -

Looking away, smiling enigmatically ...

... then returning to the dialogue.

He also embellishes this further by adding a head shake and a shrug.

"See? The little look. They thought, ooh, there's a little story, a little subtext there we didn't know about. What's going on there? Why did he look over there? What was that memory?"

Although this is a caricature, it's interesting to study and makes it clear how actors use subtext. It is important to note that the action - the look away and smile before the dialogue is not the subtext, but this implies a subtext. Often the subtext of the dialogue is clear but in this instance the subtext is left purposely unclear. This creates a sense of mystery about the character, we feel like he's not letting on what he's thinking, this potentially will tantalise and engage the audience and want them to find out more about the character.

By the way does anyone know of a scene in a film where Richard Gere does this? I would love to find an example.

This next example is a sound file from a comedy show called The Stand by the British comedian Daniel Kitson, here he talks about the lack of subtext in the film Top Gun (caution swearing!).

"My favourite films of that ilk though really is Top Gun and I'll tell you why .... The reason Top Gun's a great film is because the character in Top Gun who's a bit of a loose cannon, who plays by his own rules, who's a law unto himself, he's actually called Maverick. And his enemy who's a bit cold, a bit stand off-ish, not quite human, he's called called Iceman. There's actually a scene where Iceman says to Maverick "I don't like you because you're dangerous", and Maverick goes "Yeah, that's right, I am dangerous". It's almost like the writers decided to make a whole film without any subtext whatsoever."

This is again an exaggeration of what happens in the film but he makes an interesting point to have your characters named after their personality type - 'Maverick' and 'Iceman' and also having them say exactly what they think with no attempt at subtext would make a rather obvious and uninteresting scene.

So after listening to this I decided to try and find the scene on youtube. What I discovered is what the Top Gun script appears to lack in subtext the actors have made up for with their performance. Although I don't think it's the greatest acting, Tom Cruise's delivery of "That's right, Ice Man, I am Dangerous" has a clear subtext.

Tom Cruise snaps into anger at the start of the line, then stops, smiles and pretends to brush down Iceman's uniform - a friendly and familiar gesture. It's open to interpretation but this is how I read the subtext - The initial snap into anger is false, he's testing Iceman, trying to scare him, like jumping out and someone and shouting "Boo!". Then the subtext of the rest of the line is "I'm not going to let you get to me" and again it's interesting to note that the acting choices have little to do with the text - "That's right, Ice Man, I am Dangerous".

Anger at the start of the line ...

... then he stops, smiles and pretends to brush down Iceman's uniform.

Clearly in this scene the two characters are sizing each other up and testing each other's nerve, it's interesting to see that after this line Val Kilmer bites at Maverick - another pretend attack done in the hope of making him flinch. However, the later part of Maverick's line combines the two differing ideas of argumentative and provocative words said in a restrained and disarming way. This definitely shows that Maverick is not going to shy away from confrontation but also that he will not be so easily provoked. This makes the performance more engaging and Maverick a deeper and more interesting character than if he had just snapped and shouted the line at Iceman.

Legend of the Guardians Showreel

2011-04-12T11:17:00.009Z

Here's a compilation of some of my shots from Legend of The Guardians, a film I worked on for almost two years.

I'm responsible for all animation although there are a couple of shots where someone else animated the background characters - where Nyra says "Owlet, that one says you're his brother" and also where Ezylryb says "Soren, you did what was right". All cycles used in the flying shots are my own.

April ReelBarrow Update

2011-04-02T11:27:00.005Z

We've made our first update to ReelBarrow.

And the excellent reels of -

Aaron Hartline
Nicolas Prothias
Oliver Staphylas
Yannick Honore

can be found at ReelBarrow for your viewing enjoyment.

We're still working out the best way to manage the site but the current plan is to make the updates a monthly thing and aim to have them on, or as close to, the 1st of the month as possible.

Thanks to all those who submitted.

Dapoon's Subtext Question

2011-03-15T12:37:00.021Z

An animator called Dapoon asked me a question about subtext in animation on this post from a while ago. As my rambling answer expanded beyond the limitations of the comment box I decided to put it here.

Thanks for the question; it took me a while to get to grips with what subtext is to. Subtext is not adding extra actions to your animation but exploring the underlying meaning of spoken words and actions in the hope of creating a deeper performance.

We should always strive to seek and animate the subtext of what the character says and this can be in varying degrees of alignment to what the spoken words are. Sarcasm would be an extreme example; at this point the meaning of what the character is saying is the exact opposite of the words they're speaking. "It's cold in here" = "It's hot in here".

I like this Monty Python sketch where they play around with this subtext. The Drill Sergeant's obviously sarcastic tone and manner belies the fact he seems to be talking totally literally.

You could play this scene with the same text spoken with a literal tone and it would still make sense ... probably wouldn't be very funny though. The humour comes from our perception of what the Sergeant is asking, or not asking - the subtext.

Dapoon suggests a situation - A mother folding sheets, while she asks her son how his day at school was. Let's explore that.

For me an interesting area of subtext to explore would be in the mother's delivery. Let's say her words are simply "How was your day at school?"

She could be just asking in a way that suggests she always asks this and is not really interested, it's almost just a greeting, like a "Hello" in this instance the subtext is there but subtle. Where the subtext becomes more obvious is when she's asking with a hidden agenda to find out more about his day. She could say the same words but be asking -

"Did you get into trouble today?"
"How did you do in the test you had?"
"Did you speak to that girl you like?"

Or if she'd already had a call from the headmaster to tell her that the boy has misbehaved this could form the subtext of the delivery, it could be a rhetorical "How was your day at school?" = "I know what you've done at school"

As you can see the delivery and acting of these lines would be different but the words or text ("How was your day at school?") stay the same.

The folding of the sheets I would call a 'secondary action', this would be both separate from the performance but also linked to it, if she was annoyed at her son she would be folding differently from if she was just absently mindedly doing it while chatting to him.

Hope that helps!

Reelbarrow

2011-03-04T02:37:00.008Z

I've always enjoyed watching the showreels of really experienced animators. They inspired me greatly in my earlier career and I find they're a great motivator during an occasional break from work. There was a great site called www.strutyourreel.com which used to feature links to all the best showreels around the internet. Unfortunately strutyourreel no longer exists; it briefly mutated and then sadly disappeared. The domain is now home to a fishing site.

This was a great loss to the animation community and as there is no sign of it's return a few of us have banded together and made a showreel website for ourselves - www.reelbarrow.com

It's still a work in progress, there are some features we've yet to add like the page views (I need to learn PHP first!) and we'll be featuring more animators to. There are some big names from Pixar, Dreamworks and Blue Sky as well as some great animators you may not have discovered - hopefully an ideal site to bookmark for the occasional motivational 5 minute break at work.

If you know of a great demo reel not on the site, you can email it to submit@reelbarrwow.com

I will be posting reelbarrow updates on this blog, I've added a 'reelbarrow' topic to the sidebar so you can filter this blog to just show reelbarrow updates.

Eric Guaglione - The Early Years of 3D

2011-02-13T23:28:00.008Z

3D animation is a rare profession, one where the average age of the people working in the industry is higher than the age of the industry itself. Eric Guaglione, Animal Logic's head of animation was one of the few people involved in the early days of 3D animation when the medium was taking its first tentative steps into creature and character animation.

Eric started in the film industry in 1982, the year that the original Tron film was released. In the following exert from my interview with him he describes starting work at Digital Productions where he was employed as a computer animator alongside Chris Bailey and Bill Kroyer, one of the animators on the original Tron film.

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Here are some examples of the work Eric describes. The opening sequence of the 1986 film Labyrinth is below and the 1988 Prudential Commercial where Eric assisted in creating the eagle can be viewed HERE.

I've done a bit research and I believe the Cray X-MP supercomputer is the computer Eric talks about at Digital Productions. It was used to render the high polygon count (for the time) models at film resolution. In 1985 Bell Labs (a research and development organization) purchased a Cray X-MP/24 for $10.5 million along with eight DD-49 1.2 GB drives for an additional $1 million.

It required approximately $12,000 per month for electricity, and approximately $50,000 monthly in maintenance. Many in the industry claimed that this kind of expense could not be justified by the kinds of contracts that existed in the effects industry at the time.

Here is a picture of Bill Kroyer working at an early 3D work station. An interview with Bill where he describes the even more bizarre process of animation on Tron can be found HERE.

I find it astonishing to think back to these first days of 3D animation and contemplate what it must have been like to try to create animation with a spontaneous feel with that equipment and the incredibly labour intensive processes involved. Current computer animators owe a great debt to the artistry, talent and perseverance of these early pioneers in this art form.

If you would like to hear more from Eric, you can find my previous 'Animation Bodcast' where he talks about an early Roger Rabbit 2 test HERE.

Making of Legend of the Guardians

2010-12-22T09:44:00.002Z

I believe this video is one of the extras from the DVD of Legend of the Guardians which was released in the US last week.

The clip shows a few of the animators acting out their scenes for reference, and some have a real talent for performing as well as animating. Sadly I'm not featured but I think there is probably enough footage of me 'acting' on the internet already.

I feel I should mention that although this was a process favoured by many animators including myself, not everyone did it or found it useful. Some would get frustrated at their inability to capture the performance they wanted or were not comfortable in front of the camera. They would prefer and were perfectly capable of finding a great performance internally or through drawing. There is no one way of working that is right for everyone and all animators have to find what leads to the best end result for them.

Merry Christmas and a big thank you to everyone who is following this blog.

BYOA

2010-12-10T11:06:00.005Z

If you're an animator around Soho this Monday night you might want to stop by the Jewel Bar for the Bring Your Own Animation event being organised by Double Negative Animator Samy Fecih.

It promises to be a pretty spectacular, there will be recruiters from Double Negative to take reels and chat with people who have questions about the company, Senior Animators (such as Oskar Urretabizkaia, Rob Bekuhrs, Paul A. Davies, Stephane Mangin and myself) available to offer advice and review work, and even a lightbox for anyone brave enough to attempt some public traditional animation. You can just stop by for a bit of networking and a beer, or bring your work along on a usb stick and get feedback on it.

More information can be found on the website or facebook page.

It starts at 6.30 and costs £1, hope to see you there.

John Carter of Mars

2010-12-05T18:56:00.007Z

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I've been rather busy relocating to London but I've now settled in and hope to get some interesting things up here soon.

As for work, I'm very excited to be back at Double Negative, animating on the feature John Carter of Mars which is being directed by Pixar's Andrew Stanton.

The Name's Digger ...

2010-10-16T08:52:00.033Z

As some clips from the film Legend of the Guardians have been released I thought it might be interesting to choose one that I worked on and explain the style of the animation, how I approached my shots and the techniques I adopted for the process.

The scene I’ve chosen is the introduction of the character Digger.

This scene has a simple structure. The characters Soren and Digger meet, they argue, Gylfie intervenes and the aggressor, Digger (who's driving the scene) reaches a turning point where he changes his mind about our main characters and agrees to help. Conflict is the essence of drama and all stories requires drama to entertain the viewer and to succeed. It makes the animator's job easier if the conflict driving the scene is obvious to them.

This scene was lead by James Cunliffe and animated by his team which composed of Andrew Hunt, Jerome Dernoncourt, Thomas Price, Tim Rowlandson, and myself. It was animated early in production - it was my third sequence, but for Jerome, Thomas and Andrew, who had just arrived on the project, it was their first scene. I'm sure it was a little daunting for them to be given such an important character piece straight away. I remember Andrew's frustration as he was allocated a significant shot in the middle of the sequence which he was trying to animate whilst also getting to grips with the project's software and tools. However Andrew's talent prevailed and he achieved what was required, producing one of my favourite shots of the film.

Andrew's shot, much longer in the film than in the youtube version above.

Coincidentally this scene was not only the introduction to the character Digger, but it was the first shots of him to be animated. We were therefore given the responsibility of defining his character and laying down the foundations of how he would be animated throughout the film.

There was some interesting physicality to the scene and it was a good opportunity for us to explore how the owls would move. The brief was to keep them as naturalistic as possible in their movements, but we still had to use these movements to convey the character's motivations and feelings.

Digger is a burrowing owl and therefore written into the scene were a couple of examples of a burrowing owl’s behaviour which needed to be animated. Firstly, as a burrowing owl he lives in a hole in the ground there was a point in the scene where he had to dig and spray dirt onto Soren. Secondly, prior to this there was a pose he had to adopt, which is based on genuine owl behaviour, where he brought his wings out to his side and tilted them forward - this is a stance adopted by owls who feel threatened to make themselves appear larger and therefore more intimidating to a would-be attacker.

Beyond these two scripted behaviours myself and the rest of the team wanted to bring as much of a burrowing owl's timing, poses and attitude to the character as possible. For example, burrowing owls naturally have a very staccato way of moving, a type of movement which fitted Digger's eccentric personality. Actor David Wenham, who provided the voice, had already done a great job of adding this to his performance.

Some footage of a characterful burrowing owl.

I was given the first two shots in the sequence where Digger emerges from his hole and says the line. "Ow, nice hunting. Catching a moth that's already been caught."

I had to animate both characters in the two shots. I thought it might be interesting to contrast the two owl's actions against one another, by keeping Soren as naturalistic as possible while making Digger's performance broader in range and more cartoony. In the start of the first shot we saw Soren catching a moth in his talons (unfortunately mostly missed by the movie's fade-in from black) so I researched this action thoroughly. By observing this action of owls it was interesting to see the way they keep their wings back during the attack, their talons come forward from under their chin and how they reach out in front of their face.

I looked at a lot of footage of owls pouncing and the final animation was an amalgamation of many of them, but these are three that I found particularly useful. The first two are barn owls, the last is a hawk owl

Soren with flipped image from reference footage.

Here is some footage I used for Soren's reaction to Digger jumping out the hole and saying "Hey". Although I feel a little sorry for these owls being chased around by their keeper, I really liked their faltering steps and the a-symmetrical pose of the wings. This sort of action seemed to suit Soren at this point- his surprise had made his actions appear primal and naturalistic.

Flipped image from footage.

Soren in similar pose.

I then filmed some reference shots of myself acting out Digger's line, I’m not purporting to be an actor but I do find this process useful. Like I've set out before in my post 'Capturing Honesty', I try not to plan too much, I just try to gauge the personality of the character involved as much as possible and concentrate on the emotions of the shot. I knew Digger would be moving forward towards Soren but I tried not to focus on this. Also the acting room was too small to walk the distance I needed, so I knew I'd have to add more steps to the performance during animation.

I apologise for the quality and the sound of the movie, this is because I filmed it at 3/4 speed then sped it back up to the right frame rate afterwards. This is a tip I picked up from James Cunliffe. The extra time enables you to relax and not rush your performance, it also helped to make my movement sharper, something that would suit Digger’s character.

I decided upon a combination of two takes. I liked these because my attitude felt about right for the moment and my body action seemed to match the rhythm dialogue - something I decided to exaggerate during animation. I also liked the expression at the end. It changes briefly from anger and annoyance to something close to hurt and fear. I liked this as it shows a chink in Digger's armour. Digger is in fact not a real threat, and is unlikely to attack Soren. His aggressive reaction to Soren is nothing more than bravado, although we don't know Digger yet, Digger is harmless and he is simply upset at the loss of 'his' moth. The expression just flashes briefly across Digger's face, making it less obvious - an emotion he was trying to hide.

Expression I tried to recreate from reference.

This sequence was the first one in which I used this way of working - looking through bird footage for actions I could use, then filming myself performing the line and then marrying the two together to create a mixture of a character and naturalistic performance. Therefore this scene also helped me find and define my way of working as this became an approach I adopted throughout the rest of the film.

Digger out of sight. Shot animated by Tim Rowlandson.

I also animated a Gylfie shot later in the sequence, this was a little more straight forward. However, in the storyboards and animatic of the sequence Digger's back was still visible as he hid in his hole, but we decided that it would be funnier and easier to have him completely hidden from view. The animation director, Eric Leighton, then had the idea that Digger should not just be idle in the hole but moving around, doing something odd, out of sight of the audience. This would therefore have to be conveyed through the reactions of Soren and Gylfie as they peered into the hole.

My shot showing a confused Gylfie.

My first take of Gylfie was more straight forward, Gylfie just earnestly delivering her line - "We didn't mean to take your moth". But after Eric suggested the idea in relation to Digger, I added to the shot her looking around and expressing confusion.

As with almost all my animation, time and distance from it and hindsight mean that I now look back on these first few shots and wish I had done a few things differently.

I started the sequence before some of the other animators, and had a block of my shots approved quickly. I later saw how Andrew and James had animated the character of Digger - making his movements snappier and adding more secondary expressions. This, I feel, was more successful than mine and would have liked to have gone back into my first shot and amended it. Unfortunately, however there wasn't enough time to do this.

Images from James' shot (left) and Andrew's (right).

And although I still quite like the feel of Gylfie's shot, I feel the idea of her following Digger in the hole was not as clear as it could have been.

However, the animation director commented positively on my performance of Soren in the first shot and showed it to many animators as an example of his movement to follow, so perhaps I helped define some of the film's style there.

I still like the scene overall and I'm very glad I was able to work on it. It was fun to make and was carried out during an exciting point in production where deadlines were a little more forgiving and there was much to discover - from the characters and their movements to the resources and animation tools, as well as ways of working with them.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I would like to thank all those who have read, passed on and mentioned my flight tutorial on their website, I've been blown away by the reaction to it. And welcome to the new followers of this blog, I will endeavour to make my posts as interesting as possible!

Bird Flight Tutorial

2010-09-25T11:11:00.013Z

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I've been enjoying some time off and also moving home - from Australia back to Europe. However, I'm going to try and atone for my absence now with something I hope that you will find was worth the wait.

As Guardians is officially released in the US this weekend, I thought I'd share something relevant to the film. I feel my main area of influence in this animated film was in the design of the bird flight. I created many of the hero characters' flight cycles which were then used by the rest of the animation team.

I'd been lucky enough to animate many flying creatures prior to being appointed to Guardians. I therefore had a reasonable understanding of bird flight, so for the benefit of others, I attempted to write down my thoughts and tips on the subject in my spare time.

It quickly expanded into quite a long and detailed document as I sought to further my knowledge by drawing on all the sources I could - from video footage to websites and books on flight and ornithology. The following pages represent the finished document which was shown to all new arrivals on the project to help them quickly get up to speed and avoid the many pitfalls of animating bird flight.

VIEW TUTORIAL HERE

This will probably be most helpful to anyone who is currently animating a bird or other flying creature but hopefully others will find it an interesting insight into how I break down an animal's movement. When animating animals, especially realistic ones it is important to avoid animation clichés and preconceived ideas as to how the animal moves as well as learn from others who have attempted it before you.

Owls No More

2010-07-28T04:05:00.007Z

Animation has now wrapped on Legend of the Guardians and the film is scheduled for release in the US on the 24th September.

I would like to congratulate the entire animation team here at Animal Logic, it's been a real pleasure to work with such a talented and friendly bunch, and they've produced some simply stunning work.

Legend of the Guardians animators, I'm in the left third of the picture in the middle, wearing a grey top with orange t-shirt.

I've worked on the film for the last year and seven months and produced over 3 minutes of animation for the film ... which both sounds like a lot and not very much at the same time. It's been a tough production and myself and the rest of the department are definitely looking forward to some well-earned rest. But it's also been very enjoyable, I've definitely learned a lot and would like to thank James Cunliffe, Eric Guaglione and Eric Leighton, they have been a great source of inspiration and knowledge throughout.

I would also like to say a big thank you to my team - Wings of Desire who have been awesome. They have produced some really great work for the very challenging sequences we were given.

Left to right - Jerome Dernoncourt, Tim Rowlandson, Daniel Harris, Tonya Tornberg, Myself, Simon Ashton, Thomas Price. (missing Hunjin Park). As you can see I've been working so hard I've been unable to get a haircut recently!

Thanks guys! And good luck to everyone still working to finish the film.

New Legend of The Guardians Trailer

2010-06-16T06:04:00.009Z

Here's the latest trailer for the film I'm currently working on, Legend of The Guardians : The Owls of Ga'Hoole

I was lucky enough to have some of my work featured in it.

My shot from the previous trailer of an ominous group of owls makes a re-appearance ... but now the main character shouts "Get Them", and remarkably she does this without moving her lips!

My other shots appear near the end when the cutting gets faster.

I animated a large portion of a chase sequence for the film which you get a glimpse of here, in the first shot we see two owls bearing down on a blue bird.

My next shot has been cut into two, in the first part we see the two owls from the previous shot collide. Then after the cut, one of the owls reaches forward about to grasp the bird.

Look out for the trailer in cinemas. It will be playing in 2D and 3D in front of Toy Story 3 which will be released in the US on June 18, and in Australia on June 24.

New Website

2010-05-26T00:20:00.009Z

The new design of my website is finally finished!

I've wanted to update my first somewhat garish attempt at website design almost from the moment I'd finished it. I learned a lot from designing the original site but I think the main problem was that I created it in lots of little pieces which then I put together without much thought as to how the various elements worked together. This site, however, has been designed as more of a whole. It's still brightly coloured and in a similar style to the previous one but I've tried to make it cleaner and keep the colour palette limited and cohesive. Although, the old version still lingers on, should anyone particularly want to revisit that colour scheme.

I'm reasonably happy with it, ideally I would have liked the pages to load a bit faster, but after working on it intermittently for over a year sometimes you just have to say enough.

Content wise, I'm afraid there isn't a lot of new animation to see. Although I have added a couple of the commercials I worked on at Framestore. There are still a few things I need to add, and hopefully I'll have some more animation tutorials to put up soon.

Check it out here.

My Showreel

2010-05-17T00:12:00.005Z

My Showreel is now available to view on Vimeo.

Showreel from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Unfortunately it doesn't feature any of my latest work from Legends of the Guardians, however I'll be showing some exciting stuff from the film later this year.

Eric Guaglione's Roger Rabbit 2 Test

2010-05-09T12:36:00.016Z

Animal Logic's Head of Animation, Eric Guaglione, has had a long and varied career in the film and animation industry. He started out in traditional drawn animation and miniature work, from there he moved over to computers and worked at the forefront of 3D animation. Before Eric came to Animal Logic he worked at Disney Animation Studios where he was involved in project development and animation supervision.

He has been a part of many interesting projects but one thing he showed me that really blew me away was a test for Roger Rabbit 2 he helped create in 1998 while at Disney. I'd never seen the exaggeration and fluidity of drawn animation mixed with the solidity of 3D animation work so well before. Here's a low-res preview -

Eric Guaglione's Roger Rabbit Test from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Roger Rabbit Test: property of Disney Animation Studios

For a better look, head over to Eric's website where there is a high quality Quicktime to step through, as well as more of his work.

Recently I was inspired by the work of Clay Kaytis over at Animation Podcast and decided to conduct a few interviews of my own. I was fortunate enough to record one with Eric which I've been hoping to turn into a series of animation related podcasts ... or bodcasts if you will, but haven't yet found the time. However, I thought it would be interesting to post the part where Eric talks about this test - why it was created, the problems encountered and what eventually happened to the project.

Hopefully I'll get time to post the rest of this 'Animation Bodcast' as well as others soon (I've added an extra link to the topics).

Huge thanks to Eric for agreeing to the interview and a big thanks to the subscribers of this blog. 25 now! I am seriously amazed.

The Weight Problem

2010-04-07T11:59:00.034Z

Probably one of the most consistent comments from leads and animation directors during review is that a character 'needs a little more weight', and frustratingly it's not always easy or obvious how to rectify this. Sometimes it's down to posing and balance but often it's just that the character feels too light as they are moving around.

weight through posing by Wayne Gilbert

How to make things look heavy in animation is something that even experienced animators struggle with. I touched on this subject in my bouncing ball lecture but I think it would be good to go into more detail and really figure out how and why objects feel weighty or not when in movement. In the lecture I showed how to vary weight in the bouncing ball by altering the 'gap' - the distance between the last drawing of the ball falling and the 'squash' frame when it first impacts the ground.

These balls appear to have different weights; the one on the left feels like a ping pong ball, the one in the middle, a tennis ball, and the one on the right feels more like a bowling ball. Why does this work? All I have affectively done is slightly evened out the spacing of the heavy ball and lessen the distance the ball falls, which affectively makes the ball fall slower than the other balls. How does that make something feel heavier? Common sense would tell you that a heavier object would fall faster and accelerate more quickly, surely that is the way to make things look heavier? It seems counter-intuitive to have something you want to feel heavier, fall slower than something lighter.

But as Galileo Galilei famously proved gravity accelerates all objects at the same rate.* He demonstrated that if he dropped dropped a ten-pound weight and a one-pound weight off the Leaning Tower of Pisa they would hit the ground at the same time. Gravity acts on all objects equally despite their size and weight. This gives us quite a headache, is it therefore impossible to make a character seem heavier through gravity? If all objects fall at the same rate how can we make some feel heavier than others?

Maybe we're missing something, lets look at how gravity affects an object falling from different heights.

*Obviously there are other factors to consider the main one being air resistance if you had an object that was very light but had a large surface area, such as a feather then it will obviously fall much slower than a something of greater mass but with less surface area such as a cannon ball, but in a vacuum the ball and feather will fall at the same rate. In animation we are mostly dealing with characters - human or animal which are made of the same stuff - bone, muscle, fat, skin, and will therefore have about the same weight to surface area ratio. We can therefore take Galileo's law to be true - an elephant will fall as fast a mouse.

Ball Tests from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here I'm dropping a ball from 30cm*, 100cm, 200cm and 400cm and on the right of the screen I'm counting how many frames the ball falls for.

The results are as follows -

30cm = 6 frames
100cm = 11 frames
200cm = 16 frames
400cm = 23 frames

* not quite as accurate as I would like because I couldn't see what I was doing too clearly.

Here I have created a composite image of the tests, I've drawn a circle round the ball to help clarify their position. I've also adjusted the images so all the start and ground positions are at the same height on the screen.

If we simplify this further so we can just concentrate on the spacing, we can see the greater the height the ball falls, the more frames or longer it takes but interestingly the more even the spacing becomes.

In fact the spacing only appears very extreme at the start of the first test. Although this extreme spacing occurs at the start of the other drops, it is over such a short distance that it becomes hard to perceive that the ball is moving at all. Also look at how more even the spacing gets the further the ball falls, the spacing at the bottom of the last drop looks almost equidistant - the overall effect is that if the ball is falling from a great height it's motion is more even than if it's falling from a small height.

So we can deduce that the further an object or character falls, the longer this will take but also the more even the spacing will become.

Now, try and apply this information to an animation problem. Let's say we are given a scene to animate were a tyrannosaurus walks across frame.

We want this creature to appear realistic and obviously big and heavy, but we are unable to simply copy it from nature, there is no bipedal creature alive today that is as big as the Tyrannosaurus and therefore nothing we can use as reference.

However, we might look to a large bird from today like this ostrich, and try and scale up it's walk. Let's say we find a piece of reference where an ostrich walks through frame like above. You'll notice that like the ball images, the two creatures appear the same size in their respective shots. Although we know this to be false, it's easy to get sidetracked by the size of something in screen (or 'screen space'). In our computer scenes and on our pieces of paper there is often very little to help us get a good idea about how big something is or how far it's moving. Even though the ostrich and the Tyrannosaurus appear the same size in the two images, we know that the ostrich is 2 meters (6½ ft) tall were as the Tyrannosaurus is double the size at 4 meters (13ft). There is also a huge difference in weight between the two, the ostrich weighs just 45 kg (100lb) were the Tyrannosaurus is around 6.8 metric tons in weight.

To apply our ball information, let's look to the part of the body that falls during the walk cycle - the hips. We could take the range of movement in the ostrich and apply it to our Tyrannosaurus.

Let's say upon studying the ostrich we found that it's vertical hip range was 30cm*, we could then determine the tyrannosaurus' range. But how would we show this extra distance in movement? Well, we can use what we've just learned from the ball, for an object to fall 30cm will take around 6 frames. We know the Tyrannosaurus is double the height of the ostrich and therefore it's vertical hip range would be 60 cm. We know that it would be impossible for the Tyrannosaurus' hips under gravity alone to fall this distance in the same time, and we could probably make quite an accurate guess as to how long it would take to fall this far (8-9 frames) we also know that since the hips are falling further the spacing will appear more even, again we could use our ball images above to apply quite an accurate result.

*I've exaggerated the range in this example for clarity, in reality an ostrich's hip would on raise and fall around 2 inches (5cm).

But why stop here? We could take this further, we could exaggerate these values for the Tyrannosaurus and imply that he's even bigger than he is. If we use a few more frames and make the spacing slightly more even, we will give the effect that the Tyrannosaurs is actually even bigger and HEAVIER than it might actually have been.

And this is really the point I'm trying to make, the animator actually has a great deal of power over the physical world of their character. They can create a false gravity to imply the size - although the audience gets the impression that gravity has stayed the same and the object has got bigger.

We cannot use gravity to make an object seem heavier, instead we must create our own gravity to imply things are bigger and therefore heavier.

If we go back to our bouncing balls again we can see that what we've actually done. By reducing the final gap before the squash, this implies that the ball is bigger. So, by reducing the amount it's falling, we are effectively making it fall slower and by lessening the 'gap' we've evened out the spacing. All these things imply that the ball is bigger (as well as heavier) but further away.

For more confirmation of this theory let's look at something truly massive falling from a great distance - a huge piece of ice falling from the end of a glacier.

The ice in this video is traveling around the same distance in frame as our ball tests, but look how long it takes to fall this far. It looks almost as though it's in slow motion, when in fact, the ice is falling at around the same rate as our ball. As we are further away it seems much slower, and look at the spacing, it's even more even, the ice looks like it's falling at a constant speed, only very slightly accelerating.

But weight is not only a gravitational, vertical issue. As things move horizontally or in any direction around the screen, they can feel light. Often it's our inability to determine actual distance in our shot or 'screen space' that is conspiring to confuse us once again.

Let's look at two animals we might animate. The fastest land animal in the world, the cheetah can run at 60 mph, however the cheetah is still a big animal so we also need to show it's weight.

Let's compare it to a small animal, like the squirrel, which can run only at 20 mph. However, the squirrel is much lighter and if we compare speed for their size - by seeing how long it takes each creature to run it's own body length.

We find that the squirrel for it's size is actually quicker than a cheetah.

Weight is a fine balancing act. Often we want big, heavy things to move fast but we always have to keep in mind that they are big and to show that size (and weight) they have to move slower through shot comparatively than something that we want to appear light.

Also, as we found in our ball test, our acceleration or spacing on a small creature like our squirrel, can be more extreme. Because of it's tiny weight, a squirrel can accelerate to it's top speed very quickly (over just a few frames) which means more exaggerated spacing. Where as a big animal like the cheetah takes longer to reach it's top speed and therefore has more even spacing.

But keep in mind animation is not about recreating reality. We can also play with weight, making some characters feel heavier which can give them a greater presence in a shot and therefore a greater sense of importance.

Yoda is a small yet powerful character. His movement is usually slow and considered which subconsciously tricks the audience into thinking that he's larger and therefore more important. When Yoda jumped around during his light sabre duel in Star Wars : Attack of the Clones his character was made to look light, this destroyed the illusion for many, he suddenly felt weaker and less important at precisely the moment he needed to look strong.

This weight theory is not just about making big characters seem big, it can also be used to give weight and gravitas to small light characters when they need it.

Legend of the Guardians Trailer

2010-03-04T22:20:00.007Z

Yay! I finally get to show something from the film I'm currently working on - The Legend of the Guardians, directed by Zack Snyder of Watchmen and 300 fame. It's based on the book series The Guardians Of Ga'Hoole by Kathryn Lasky.

I was fortunate enough to animate two shots for the trailer, one where an ominous group of owls adopt an attacking formation.

And the shot at the end were a heroic owl rises, carrying a burning lantern. I've been animating a lot of shots in slow motion on this film, something I've never done before. It poses quite an interesting challenge, I'll have to write a post about it soon.

There's a lengthy article about the film here for anyone who wishes to find out more.

Enjoy.

Broken Computer

2010-02-19T23:33:00.001Z

Apologies about the lack of posts recently. Unfortunately my home computer is currently not working and it'll be at least a week or two until it's fixed, but I should have something really good to post very soon ...

Happy Holidays Everyone!

2009-12-23T02:41:00.006Z

Well it's Christmas here in Sydney which is a little odd to someone from Scotland, where the temperature's only a couple of degrees at this time of year, but I'm enjoying it all the same.

Sorry my posting has slowed down recently. Unfortunately I've been rather busy over the festive period with one thing and another but I should have some exciting things to share with you in the new year. A big thanks for all the support everyone has shown me for this blog, it's very much appreciated.

The above picture of me was taken by local Sydney photographer Eugene "Uge" Tan. Check out the amazing water photography at his website aquabumps.com.

All the best,

Brendan

Squished Tooth Fairies

2009-11-19T11:34:00.029Z

I found another playblast of a Hellboy 2 shot I worked on so thought it would be fun to show it here and also explain how it was done.

Playblast of the Hellboy Rolling Statue from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

It's from the film's 'Tooth fairy' sequence. The first half of the movie is the playblast, the second half is an early comp with basic textures and lighting, a first pass at the background 'swarm' fairies and a few of the other effects.

There were several narrative points that had to be addressed in this shot. In the first part the director Guillermo del Toro wanted the rolling statue covered in squashed Tooth Fairies, this had to then reveal a mass of dead and dying Tooth Fairies, twitching and writhing around.

I approached this by first creating a library of cycles that I could reuse quickly and easily to create a moving carpet of the creatures.

Above I've named the cycles and shown how they were applied ... as best as I can remember.

Face Up 1, Face Up 2 and Face Down are cycles I kept predominantly still but with some random spasms and twitches.
Twitcher - Flails around, letting out an agonising scream then finally relaxes and coils into his death pose.
Kicker - is based on an insect video I found on youtube. The idea is that the dead insect's nerves keep his legs kicking, this drives his body round in a circle.
Crawler - with his legs and one arm badly injured, this fairy pulls himself along by his one good arm.

The rigs also had a clever function - a series of blendshapes that could be dialled in to give the effect that a leg or arm was missing. There were also shapes that got rid of everything but the chest, head, or hips and legs. This meant I could quickly and easily make the cycle look very different by removing half the fairy, or could superficially make a cycle look distinct just by removing a few legs or an arm.

I populated this section of the shot with these characters, then tried to create 'hero' tooth fairies to give the viewer interesting things for their eye to settle on ... and also to amuse myself. There was a platform in the top left of frame so I placed a hero 'kicker' on there - he drops off the statue then feebly kicks himself in a circle. In the centre of the picture, '2' drops off the statue into frame to draw your eye into the picture. '3' - a badly injured 'crawler' drags his torso forward leaving the rest of his body behind.

The next level of Fairies had to interact with the characters, these were some of the most fun to do. They are lead by the actions of the actors who are miming being attacked by the creatures. It was then my job to find a series of movements that would fit the actions performed. For this to work convincingly, the characters movements have to be rotoscoped onto CG doubles. My memory's a bit hazy here but I think I did both Hellboy and Abe in this shot, (apologies if it was someone else). Double Negative had a neat little tool that made it easy to constrain the Tooth Fairies to the geometry of the CG doubles and it could be easily animated on and off as they landed and then took off or got hit.

There are four of these 'attacking' Tooth Fairies in the shot, two on Abe when we first see him, one who lands on Hellboy, and one much later, and you'll have to look very closely for this, on Abe's leg when he is on the stairs - Abe sweeps him off, he hits the banister and bounces back onto the stairs and is then stood on.

I'm always impressed by actors who can convincingly mime such actions with nothing to guide them, it also makes the animator's job a lot easier. The actor who plays Abe, Doug Jones, is awesome at this, I hope to write a post on just this soon.

The next level of Tooth Fairies are the ones that are to be shot by the various characters, you'll notice in the playblast in the top video that the gun blasts are absent. It was up to me to work out when the best and most appropriate time for the gun to go off. Again much of this is driven by the performance of the actors.

To create exploding fairies I was able to use the limb removing blendshapes I mentioned before. When a fairy is shot his visibility is switched off, at the same time several other fairies appear with their various parts hidden, they are then scattered to create the impression that the fairy has exploded. The effects department then added in some liquidy gloop to give the fairies a nice splat too.

I also used this technique for the fairy that Hellboy swipes, I thought that since Hellboy is supposed to be incredibly strong it would be good to have this one disintegrate with the impact.

Each rig in the scene slowed it down so I tried to be as efficient as possible with my Tooth Fairies, you'll notice many of the attacking, or being shot in the background swoop past camera to get extra value out of them.

Amusingly, in the first playblast a member of the on set crew also makes an appearance, he was painted out in in final plate.

Hellboy Rolling Statue Sequence from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here is the finished shot. As you can see many extra effects have been added - the swarm stuff is awesome as is the fire and tooth fairy blood and goo, on the ground around the dead fairies.

The Animator's Buffet

2009-11-11T04:18:00.007Z

Animal Logic colleague and friend David Williams, has a great blog called The Animator's Buffet, David has an immense knowledge of animation history and has dug up some fascinating and varied examples to show, as well as including his insightful observations about them.

Check it out.

Also, I've recently added a 'Followers' gadget to the sidebar of this blog. If you find my online ramblings interesting you can now click "follow" there to be notified when I've posted something new. Many thanks to those who already have.

Acting, Breathing and Al Pacino

2009-11-07T00:24:00.026Z

Breathing is not something we are often conscious of, therefore animating a character breathing during dialogue is easily overlooked. Spending the time studying and adding this to your shot can really create a great sense of believability to your work. In fact, as we'll discover, breathing is something that can be used to drive a performance.

We first should take some time to understand how breathing works and what controls it.

Breathing, as I'm sure you're aware, is the expanding and shrinking of the lungs. This is primarily driven by the diaphragm which contracts, moving down and pulling air into your lungs, then during the exhale the diaphragm relaxes, moving up and expelling the air from our lungs. However, this is not the only force acting on the lungs. There are muscles around the ribs which contract, expanding the rib cage by swinging the ribs up, then on the exhale they expand and the ribs swing down causing the rib cage to get smaller.

I've used a 3d animation package to create a graph which represents how lung volume changes during a typical breath taken when at rest. The air fills quickly at first then slows as it reaches the apex, on the exhale, the air leaves the lungs quickly at first then slows as the lung volume reaches it's lowest point.

However when we speak, our breathing pattern is very different. The air is inhaled as before but is then compressed, the muscles around the ribs and the diaphragm working against each other to condense the air in our lungs to create a positive pressure there. The air is then steadily released as the the dialogue is spoken, then after the line of dialogue is finished, the diaphragm is relaxed. This causes the last of the air to empty quickly from the lungs, then we start to breathe in and the process can begin again.

Of course this is not a one way process, dialogue also affects the lung volume - if the dialogue has a particularly loud accent in it, that will affect the lung volume by creating a sudden drop. I've represented this above in my lung volume graph by showing a drop in the curve. As well as loud accents, often 'w' sounds use greater amounts of air and will also cause the above to happen.

Now we have looked at this in abstract, let's look at an example. I've selected a clip of Al Pacino from the start of the teaser trailer for Ocean's 13. Al Pacino's breathing is often quite apparent in his performances. I suspect this is because he was originally a stage actor and has learned how to use and exaggerate his breathing to help to project his voice. But in this case, I believe he's using it primarily to drive tension into his voice.

Ocean's 13 teaser trailer can be found here

transcript -
"I know people, highly invested in my survival and they are people who really know how to hurt in ways you can't even imagine."

First, let's talk about the performance in general. Al Pacino's character Willy Banks, is a powerful and ruthless casino owner and he has just learned of Danny Ocean's plans to disrupt his business. In this shot, he warns him that there would be violent consequences if Ocean carries out these plans.

"You're joking?"

Al's character is incensed at the idea that anyone would set out to damage his business, although the conversation is conducted in public, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. He's also very clever and doesn't want to reveal that he is affected by this. Al Pacino's performance is very restrained, but it's charged with an intensity which leaves us in no doubt that he is deeply enraged. He keeps his face predominately impartial, at only one point does he let the anger he's feeling creep briefly onto his face - just before he says "really know how to hurt". This is known as a 'microexpression', to do this voluntarily, really shows Al Pacino's acting genius, they naturally occur when someone is trying to conceal or repress an emotion. This one flashes across his face, it is literally only there for one frame, hard to spot when the clip is played at full speed but we read it subconsciously.

Microexpression - incandescent rage

There is a wonderfully subtle texture as well as a change in tempo and tone through the piece. During the first line "I know people" his body is ever so slightly loose and there is a hint of a smile that says "you're joking, aren't you?". Then, as he says "highly invested in my survival...", his body tenses, the speed of his delivery increases and we get that glimpse of anger he's feeling, then at "you can't even imagine" his eyes widen and his speech slows down again to intimidate his opponent by suggesting that he could do something crazy.

"I could do something crazy"

Al Pacino's phonemes, like his performance, have been kept small but he's using his breathing to generate as much tension in his voice as possible as well as project what would otherwise be just a whisper. He's forcing as much air as he can through the narrow exit of his voice box. If you watch his throat you can see it tense as he speaks, then relax as he releases the pressure to breathe in.

Analysis of Al Pacino's Breathing from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here I've animated a representation of his lung volume on the right hand side of the screen. If you would like to step though this video and/or view it at larger size I have placed a quicktime version here

What's interesting is how almost all his movement is initiated or affected by his breathing. You can see his body tensing as he compresses the air before each line of dialogue, then you see his body relax slightly as he inhales. This causes his body to rock backwards a couple of times during this scene. There is only one small body and head movement during "even" that appears to be separate from his breathing.

Here is the animation curve of the bar in the movie above. We can see how the breathing pattern we cited above appears throughout the performance, note the way it varies too. We can also see how the rhythm of his breathing echos the intensity in the performance - at the start during "I know people" his breath is slower, drawing out the exhale in his 'almost laugh', but as his delivery gets more vehement during "highly invested in my survival ... who really know how to hurt" his breathing gets faster, shorter and we find small half-breaths. Then during that intimidating last line, we can see how he slows down again.

So, how can we use this? Well, if you were trying to create a subtle performance and wanted to keep the character still, but not so much that the character 'dies', and obviously we don't want the character just floating around randomly, we could base the character's movements around the breathing and can be sure it will work and add to the performance. Also, if you wanted to create an intensity in your performance you could exaggerate the breathing and seek to show the the tension in the body as the character compresses and holds the air in their lungs as they speak.

Thanks to James Cunliffe who helped me put this post together.

Kramer Enters ...

2009-10-24T01:55:00.013Z

I found this video of every Kramer entrance, in chronological order, on Spungella, where Jean-Denis has also kindly posted a link to my bouncing ball lecture. Thank you!

As a big Seinfeld fan I've gone back and watched many of the earlier episodes in which Kramer's character was not as defined. It's really interesting to see how the actor, Michael Richards, slowly evolved the character, something that's apparent in his entrance - it gradually becomes more defined and consistent although he also does variations on it depending what the scene requires. At the start the characters are also getting more acquainted too - he knocks in the first one! and holds back, asking permission to enter, in the second one he looks a little unsure as he crosses the threshold but then quickly becomes almost overly comfortable crossing the boundary into Jerry's apartment.

It also follows on from from what I was talking about before - finding gestures and idiosyncrasies that are specific to the character you're animating, Kramer is very unique - he's both laid back and very intense, and his sliding entrance fits him perfectly.

I've watched a documentary where Michael Richards talked about this (and if I remember correctly), he said one day he found some shoes in the wardrobe department and tried them on, they were the wrong size but they had smooth sole which enabled him to perform this sliding entrance, he felt that the shoes were one of the defining keys to performing Kramer, someone who slid through life.

It's also very comical, Michael Richards is an amazing physical comedian, a quality which perfectly counters Jerry's verbal wit, not many people could get a big laugh from just entering a room. No wonder it became his trademark.

Big Blog Sort Out

2009-10-22T07:03:00.008Z

I've decided to order my blog so that anyone visiting might find things they're interested in more easily. I've added labels to all the posts, which you can find in the sidebar, and also put every post under 6 main topics.

Tutorials
Animation lectures, workshops and animation methods - aimed at anyone new to the industry wishing to learn more about the techniques of the animation process.

Critiques
Animators who have bravely sent me their work asking for my opinion on it. I believe viewing critiques of other people's work is a good way to learn how you might improve your own animation.

Behind the Scenes
Any posts which may give you an insight into some aspect of working in the industry - how a specific shot was done, early animation tests for films etc.

Links
Links to film trailers, other animator's websites, or things of interest.

Personal Work
Posts regarding my personal work and employment, as well as website updates and anything else.

Random Thoughts
Theories and thoughts, usually animation or film related.

There is also a labels list, so for example, you can sort posts by the title of the film worked on - Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, The Tale of Despereaux etc.

If you'd like to read more posts under any of these topics, please let me know.

Striving to be Original

2009-10-19T22:16:00.016Z

I recently received an email from animator named Adam king, who showed me his work and asked my opinion on how to improve? It's a tricky question. Adam is not new to animation, he has a lot of experience, has built up a solid grasp of the fundamental rules of animation and displays a real talent for physical action. So once these basics are learned, how do you progress to the next level? It's something I often wonder about myself and one thing I try to do is spend time reading blogs and animation websites, looking for inspiring work and hoping to come across a little gem of information that can help advance my own work. I stumbled across an interview with Brad Bird on the spline doctors site and he said something on this subject which really struck a chord with me, he's talking about what separates good animation from great animation.

Brad Bird interview can be found here

around 33.33

"We tend to rely on the stock solutions to problems by cobbling together things we've seen [in animation before] there are animated features where I just know every little pattern that they're going to do before they do it ... and it's slick, but it is absolutely not felt, it is series of little clichés and you're not getting any insight into the character ... Observe the things around you, observe the people around you, what kind of character is this, is this an arrogant character, is this a insecure character, how does insecurity manifest in movement?"

Classic 'W' pose.

I know that my own work suffers from this, when I look back at some of my older work I can now see it's riddled with clichés. The first CG acting test I did with the Pixie from the second Harry Potter Movie is an example, the animation isn't great but also I can now clearly see that much of the acting was borrowed from other stuff I'd seen - the shaking head, the hand flurry, the twining 'W' arm positions, the blinks, and expression changes - Some of it intentionally so, some of it not.

Pixie Test

The trouble is it's sometimes fun to animate clichés, after all we're fans of animation, that's why we got into it, and so when we start out we want to copy the things we've seen done in the medium. Also we know these ideas will work, so when staring at a blank screen it's very tempting to do something we've seen before rather than to try and come up with something new. I also think it's subconscious, the brain has stored in it your favourite bits of animation and calls them up without your knowing. Eamon Butler, my animation supervisor at Double Negative once said to me "never go with your first idea".

When I'm first given a shot, often after hearing the soundtrack and seeing the pre-vis or storyboards, an initial idea will pop into my head. It would be easy to just do that, but I believe this is more likely to be an obvious clichéd idea or a copy of a similar animation I've seen - I have no factual basis for this theory by the way, it's pure speculation. But I think Eamonn was on to something, and I think it's good to never start to animate a shot without first exploring the possibilities of it, as this will lead to a better and more original work.

Adam sent me some of his work, and I'd like to talk about an exercise he created, shown above, which has a character running through a scene. The piece is well executed and for most part I really like the physics and posing of the character.

I especially appreciate that there is an attempt to create a thought process in the character too, even though it's predominantly a physical exercise and the character's face is rigid. The way he looks around after jumping down is a nice touch and really adds something to it.

However, there are a few points where I think he has perhaps strayed into an obvious pose or gesture. An example is in the anticipation before the jump down, the pose he's used, where he leans back, twists his body, and swings his arms to the side works perfectly well but feels like an animation standard, almost like a toned down cartoon anticipation - like Sylvester would do before he chases after Tweety or Tom after Jerry.

Adam has the principles learned, he knows before the jump there should be an anticipation and the one there works, but for me it needs something extra to really sell who the character is and what his motivation is.

This animation actually reminded me of a similar a piece created by Carlos Baena in a scene from The Incredibles. He has broken down how he approached and planned it on his website (read it here)

The first part of the second shot is essentially an anticipation for the jump off the building, it would've been easy to make it clichéd and uninteresting but he has added ideas into this action which have really lifted it.

"Ultimately I tried to sell the idea of him getting ready as a tennis player where they are ready to start playing and their ankles are going up and down. I was trying to sell Mr.Incredible not only as a big guy, but a big guy that could be very fast and agile. In terms of the motivation, I kept thinking Mr. Incredible kept telling himself "Think fast, think fast!!"."

This is brilliant, Carlos has not only given Mr Incredible a subtext ("think fast, think fast") which I talked about in a previous post, but also added an idea as to how the action is going to be performed - like a professional athlete, a tennis player. I think it's really successful, I actually remember seeing that shot for the first time in the cinema and being amazed by it then. Obviously, I wouldn't suggest you copy this idea, instead try to do something for your character, something specific to him.

The character's panting at the end of the scene, again conveys the message that he's tired and I like that this has been added, but seems a bit artificial, almost mechanical. It might have been better to show his exhaustion by adding another idea to it, a small stumble as he stood up, or maybe combine the pant with looking at where he has just been or where he's going next. Adding something to this basic idea would make it unique and original, I believe that once the principles have been learned, originality is one of the keys to improving and attaining that illusive next level in animation.

Good work Adam.

Framestore Idents Revisited

2009-10-14T22:44:00.005Z

Back in July last year I won an internal competition to find an idea for a new Framestore ident. I put the movies of my various concepts on youtube but was never happy with the video quality. I have now switched them over to vimeo which is much better.

If you'd like to view the idents on vimeo go here

The updated original post can be found here

New Reel

2009-10-06T21:56:00.006Z

I used the rainy weather over the long weekend here in Sydney as an excuse to finally update my Showreel. It now includes my latest work from The Tale of Despereaux and Hellboy II - The Golden Army.

It can be found here

The page also gives you a sneak peek at the look of my new website which I'll be unveiling soon.

Some Thoughts On Acting Part 2 (capturing honesty)

2009-09-27T04:42:00.004Z

Finally, here's part 2. This is about honesty in acting, and is primarily a method to employ while filming yourself for animation reference and includes an example of my work and some embarrassing clips of myself. Enjoy.

When working on The Tale of Despereaux, we were encouraged to act our shots out and then to show this reference to the director, Sam Fell, before starting to animate.

As context is important in the following example, I should give you some back story. A rat called Rosscurro has convinced a servant girl, Mig, to abduct a princess named Pea. Roscurro, through a series of events has turned from a hero to a bitter villain, hell bent on punishing someone, specifically the princess, for the ill-treatment he has received. He has told the naive Mig, that if she abducts Pea and locks her in the dungeon, she can become the princess in her place, when in fact this is untrue and he intends to trap both of them in the dungeon.

In this sequence the three characters are walking through the cavernous and deserted dungeons, Rosscurro is on Mig's shoulder and talking into her ear. The terrified Princess, who is bound up and held at knife point by Mig is screaming, and in this shot Roscurro says to Mig, who repeats everything he tells her, "Tell her it's no use, no one can hear her".

Here's one of my first takes, I decided at the start of the shot I would look toward Mig, and that for "tell her it's no use" I would try a dismissive gesture, then look toward the princess for "no one can hear her" while giving a fierce point.

take1

There are many things I didn't like about this performance. Firstly, I'd given myself too much to do in the time I had (a common animation mistake), and I was struggling to fit in both the dismissive gesture and the point. Also, pointing is one of those animation clichés that it's best to try and avoid. This performance was very 'on-the-nose', so I decided to try a different approach.

Shooting this was still a valuable experience, as I could see straight away that those ideas were not going to work well. To animate the performance and discover that, would've taken days, here I was able to see very quickly that this was not as strong as I thought it would be.

take2

This is footage from another take, this time I decided I wouldn't try to plan what I was going to do, I would just switch the camera on try and put myself in the mind frame of the character and see what happened. I also decided to concentrate on the subtext of the dialogue which was "so what, nobody cares" .

When I shot this I thought that I wasn't really doing anything and so this would be uninteresting and unusable, but when I looked back over the footage I was surprised to see I had been doing more than I thought and the performance seemed to work better than the last take. First of all, the action was much simpler - no hand gestures or excess information, but it was stronger for it, my body posture at the end was simple and clear, and seemed to be conveying what the shot was about, bitterness and disinterest. I had turned away from who I was speaking to, this is something I probably wouldn't of planned, it's customary to have your character look to whom they're talking to for clarity, and usually if a character is angry, you'd think that they would stare at the source of their anger. But in this shot, even though he was angry, he wasn't incandescent with rage toward the princess, in fact he was detached and uncaring about her, and her cries for help. Therefore, since he didn't care about either who he was talking to, or about, it made sense that he looked away and clarity wasn't a problem as there was no one else around, a point he was making in the dialogue. I subconsciously, did a little shrug during, "no one can hear her", it was subtle but was something that I could exaggerate in animation. There was also an eye shift around "hear", another thing I did subconsciously but which also made sense for the shot. My facial expression seemed to fit better as well instead of just anger, I had a more specific, surly sneer.

Here is my first, stepped key, block of the shot -

Roscuro Block from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

And here is the finished animation, rendered simply -

Roscuro Final Animation from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

As you can see, apart from the adding of the vertical motion of Mig as she walks along, the shot hardly had any major revisions as it went through animation. I copied my performance, while exaggerating certain things, like the shoulder shrug as well as attitude in body posture. It was one of the most straight forward shots for me to complete on Despereaux, and although far from perfect, I believe it's one of my most successful. Sam Fell actually commented how strong the attitude was in it, which was very satisfying.

If you've ever tried to film yourself for an animation you're planning, and have had preconceived ideas about what you'd like the character to do, you quickly discover how hard acting is, to keep your mind on giving a performance while also concentrating on what your body is doing is extremely tough. I have a great respect for people who can get their bodies and face to do precisely what they want when acting out reference. Jeff Gabor is a great example, his Horton Hears a Who comparison reel is incredible, his ability to act what he wants to animate is very impressive. However, I find this method, even when done well, can lead to the result feeling unnaturally acted, rather than something more honest. Much better, I think to ignore what your body is doing, try and feel what the character is feeling, concentrate on the subtext, and see what happens.

Working on Guardians of Ga'Hoole I'm using this approach a lot, and my lead, James Cunliffe is showing me further techniques, like shooting with the dialogue slowed down or doing a couple of passes, the first one this, sub-conscious, 'honesty' pass then, shooting more reference this time concentrating on the physicality of the performance. Then you can use both to make a very strong piece of animation ... but more about this another time.

Some Thoughts on Acting Part 1 (subtext)

2009-09-03T17:05:00.012Z

I was recently asked by Chetan, a young animator, about acting in animation so I thought I'd post my thoughts here. This was supposed to be just one post but it's got rather large so I've had to break it down into two. This first one is on subtext in dialogue.

I was introduced to this term while working on The Tale of Despereaux. Put simply, subtext is the underlying meaning of what someone is saying, not what the words actually are. What we interpret as viewers is ALWAYS the subtext and not the text. An example would be the word 'OK', it can mean many things based on context and the way it's delivered.

Text = "OK"

POSSIBLE SUBTEXT =

1. "I'm OK"
2. "I'm OK?"
3. "Are you OK?"
4. "stop Hassling me"
5. "I really don't want to do this but OK - I will do it for you"
6. "I am resolute"
7. "I am pumped let's go!"
8. "I've finished"
9. "I understand you"
etc….

Here's a piece of dialogue from the film Joe Versus the Volcano, Joe's boss is on the phone so we only hear one side of the conversation -

Joe Versus The Volcano

here's the transcript -
"I know he can get the job. But can he do the job? Harry. Yeah, Harry. But can he do the job? I know he can get the job. But can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you. I'm not arguing that with you. I'm not arguing that with you. I'm not arguing that with you' Harry! Harry, Harry. Yeah, Harry, but can he do the job? I know he can get the job. But can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you. Harry, I am not arguing that with you! Who said that? I didn't say that. If I said that, I would have been wrong. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not arguing that with you! Yeah, Harry, I know he can get the job. But can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you! I am not arguing that with you! I am not arguing that with you! Who told you that? No! I told you that! Me! What? Maybe. Maybe, maybe. Maybe!"

The character basically repeats the same three or four things, yet it sounds like a real conversation doesn't? How can someone have a conversation when all they say is the same couple of sentences over and over again? Because of the subtext, what the character means is not what he's saying, take the phrase "I'm not arguing that with you", at various points in the conversation it means different things -

Text = "I'm not arguing that with you"

SUBTEXT =

"That's beside the point"
"Stop repeating yourself"
"Listen to me"
"Please answer the question"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore"

Although, this is obviously open to interpretation, there is no doubt that it feels like he is trying to move the conversation forward by changing the subtext of what he is saying. The writer played around with this idea, and there are many scenes in the film where the characters would repeat the same line with different sub textual meaning.

Some Like It Hot is a famously good script and it is riddled with conversations with no textual meaning but with layers of great sub textual content. Here's a clip -

Watch at around 2.05.

Here's the text from part of the conversation between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis' characters -

"So who are you?"
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"
"not very likely"
"You staying at the hotel?"
"Not at all"
"Your face is familiar"

The characters words aren't saying much but there is definitely a lot going on in these word. The first layer of subtext is that she is trying to talk to him and he is acting aloof. But under the surface, there is a further layer, as we also know that he is pretending to act this way as he knows exactly who she is and what he has to do to attract her.

On one level his subtext is -

"go away, leave me alone"

But underneath this he is really saying

"I'm intriguing, I'm famous and handsome, talk to me."

Very clever stuff. The reason this scene is so entertaining is because of the subtext, which is clear in the body language and delivery of the dialogue, and that's what we the audience read, not the spoken words.

So how does this effect animation? Well this is a very important, we should ALWAYS strive to seek and animate the subtext, and the subtext should ALWAYS be different to the text. This is so important that for non dialogue shots, Randy Cook would record the unspoken dialogue (subtext) of a shot for his animators to animate to in their scenes.

Here's an hypothetical scene - A girl appears from a fitting room and shows a new dress she's wearing to her boyfriend, she asks his opinion, he says "yeah, it's great".

If we have his body language mimicking that thought, (it's great) the animation could be fantastic, but the idea isn't very interesting. It's what we call on-the-nose acting, and is just that, acting the words without any deeper thought as to their meaning or what the character is thinking. If the boyfriend says "yeah, it's great", yet his body language says "I'm bored, can we go home now?" we'll have gotten inside the character and given him some depth and therefore created something much more interesting and entertaining.

Some Sweet Showreels

2009-08-12T03:31:00.009Z

A couple of my good, and very talented friends have their Showreels online, they aren't easy to find so I thought I'd post them here.

This first one is from an old friend, Craig Bardsley. I met Craig at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee on the animation course, after which we were both employed by Framestore. Craig quickly established himself there with his superhuman ability to animate creatures. His are some of the most memorable shots from The Golden Compass, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Harry Potter films, not to mention the 'birthing shot' from The Children of Men, which I still rate as one of the most breath taking pieces of animation ever.

watch it here

The next one is from James Cunliffe whom I met on Happy Feet, then worked with again on The Tale of Despereaux, and he's currently my Lead on The Guardians of Ga'Hoole. James is great at physical animation but his real strength is his acting, his ability to give a film's quiet moments an intensity and honesty is second to none.

watch it here

Very inspiring stuff.

Dundee Degree Show

2009-06-20T00:26:00.009Z

The animation course I taught at last year has just had their Degree Show, a website with all the students' films is available here.

Watch out for animator Chris Seed, his film 3hirty Six (pictured above) is well worth a look.

Well done everyone. For those of you that gave me a mention in your credits, thank you, I'm very flattered.

Bouncing Ball Lecture ... again

2009-06-08T10:45:00.007Z

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, I've been rather busy at work.

I recently noticed that the blog I created for the bouncing ball lecture I did back in Dundee last year doesn't work very well on some computers so I've created a html version. It can be found here -

http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/bb_lecture/index.html

It's my take on a lecture shown to me by my animation supervisor, Michael Eames, when I first arrived at Framestore. He received it from Phil Nibbelink when working on the film Balto, who in turn, was taught this by Disney's Frank Thomas.

Oh, and if anyone knows how to make movies exported from Quicktime pro loop, please let me know.

Jeff's Axe Attack

2009-04-27T09:55:00.008Z

Jeff Baker is a multi talented draughtsman, concept artist and lead animator at a game studio who got in contact with me and asked if I could critique some of his animation. His blog can be found here, I've decided to comment on his "axe attack" animation which can be viewed here.

After looking at his previous animations, he seems to be moving in the right direction, learning fast and improving greatly with each test. The axe attack is very dynamic and predominantly a well executed piece. Jeff seems to have a good eye for poses, I especially like how the axe follows a nice arch over the character's head.

However, a pose I would consider altering is the one around frame 33. The head at this point feels a little unnatural and when viewed in motion, it seems to be fighting the movement of the body. I've drawn a suggested position, and from another angle to make sure it's clear. I'd also consider having it reach this position later than the chest and hips, then perhaps have it rotate back before the rest of the body, this would lead into the next action.

The main issues I've found in the animation are to do with weight and inertia, I think if you concentrate on learning these principles it will really help your animation.

The way I think about inertia is quite Newtonian, "A body persists it's state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force". In other words, objects cannot change speed or direction without being pushed by something else. Gravity always acts upon us and we know if we throw a ball up in the air, our hand at first acts against gravity pushing the ball up, but from the moment the ball leaves our hand, gravity will make the ball decelerate and eventually make it change direction and accelerate back toward earth. Importantly, an objects horizontal movement is not affected by gravity and has to be accelerated and decelerated by other forces.

I'm sure that all sounds pretty obvious and straight forward but let's try and implement that in our character. The first place I'd do this is on the character's hips, specifically when he jumps toward the other character. From frame 15, the character's hips are accelerating forward and up by pushing against his right foot until frame 20 when this foot leaves the ground (I like that you've let this foot slip back slightly showing the force of the hips in the opposing direction). At this point no horizontal forces are acting on his body - his body should be moving forward at a constant speed while his vertical motion is responding to gravity.

Then on frame 21 the hip movement suddenly comes to a halt, and then translates down. This seems to me unlikely as his foot has only just made contact with the ground, we need time for his leg to push against the momentum of the body. I would suggest that the hips continue to move forward after the foot contacts the ground for a few frames, with each frame the movement getting less, showing the leg and foot pushing against the hips, slowing them down. This forward movement would also provide a reason for his head to rotate back. Unfortunately, you'll need to alter the foot positions to do this.

This theory would also effect when both heals twist between frames 04 and 14. If we try and act out this movement we quickly find that it is not possible, we have to move the weight off one foot in order to twist it. So, this would work better if he first started twisting his right foot just before frame 4 when his weight is over the left foot, then he twists his other foot as his weight shifts to his right foot.

Between frame 5 and 8 the axe and the body move backward at the same time and speed. If you delayed the hand as I have suggested, this would make the movement feel a little more organic and would add a little weight to the axe, which then leads me on to a bigger problem. My overall impression is that the axe feels too light and if this character were wielding an axe of this size, he would not be able to perform the movement you have created.

This is an easy mistake to make, I always try and find some reference to help me animate. Check out this footage of a lumberjack competition.

The axes these competitors have are much smaller than the one in your animation, yet they feel much heavier. I'm not saying copy this swing action but you can certainly take things from it. The competitors use two hands to swing the axe, spreading them apart to lift and aim the axe. They also keep their feet fairly planted on the ground, although you can see moments when they have almost no weight on a leg by the way the knee wobbles around. They don't jump toward the wood, their movements are quite limited, yet they still strike some very dynamic poses.

My overall advice would be to possibly replace the large axe in his hand with something smaller and lighter - perhaps a sword. This will mean with a few alterations you'll turn this into a great piece. Then if you want to do an attack with an axe of this size, possibly have a look at some reference, and/or act the movement out with something really heavy. Then animate it concentrating on figuring out how the character would push and be affected by swinging around such a heavy mass.

Hope that helps, as I said before I was very impressed by your animation and think with a little more weight your stuff could be amazing.

All the best,

Brendan

The Brain turn around

2009-04-07T00:09:00.011Z

Here is my first attempt at traditional animation in a long time. I decided to try a turnaround of The Brain from Pinky and The Brain. Because I feel a little rusty, I thought I'd ease myself into this gently, so I just concentrated on keeping the same shape and volume in the character and ignored the mechanics and acting for the moment.

The Brain Turnaround from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

This test has been put to one side rather than finished. I might go back and fix it later but I feel like I've learned a lot just getting this far, forcing myself to think about turning these shapes around in space. The limbs and facial features are wobbling much more than I would like, and I've made a visible error with the position of the body in one of my keys. However, I am reasonably happy with the cranium, as it holds it's shape and volume quite well.

I found The Brain quite a hard character to draw, as his proportions and shape are quite unusual. His head in particular is tough, because it's not a simple sphere or oval like many cartoon characters. I used this model sheet, thinking this would be a solid basis for the exercise, but it actually led me astray in a number of ways. The feet are in a different position in each drawing, and also the ears change shape and position on his head.

Behind the screen ...

2009-04-02T09:45:00.005Z

Here is a shot I worked on from the film Hellboy 2 : The Golden Army. In this sequence, the character of Abe Sapien is being beaten up by the much bigger Mr Wink, but the action is partially obscured by a screen.

Abe and Wink Fight from Hellboy 2 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

I thought it would be fun to show some of my playblasts that reveal what's going on behind that screen.

Playblasts of Fight I animated from Hellboy 2 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

My initial version of this shot was much more realistic, with Wink punching Abe more and throwing him around much less. When it was reviewed by the director, Guillermo del Toro, he asked for something more extreme, wanting Abe to be thrown around like a rag doll. Specifically citing Bam Bam from The Flintstones (when he used to throw Fred around) as an example of the action he wanted.

These playblasts are not the finished animation, I animated this block of the fight, and the animation was finished off by another animator, Ina Hurst.

The Sound

2009-02-27T03:32:00.004Z

I was recently contacted by Breanna Barden, the Design Editor for The Sound, an award winning high school newspaper in Gig Harbor, Washington. Not a publication I'm overly familiar with, but you have to embrace these random internet meetings sometimes. She was doing a story on how graphics are used to bring superheroes to life and wanted to ask me a few questions about Hellboy 2.

Here's the article as it appeared in the February 11th issue of the newspaper.

Congratulations Breanna, it was a pleasure to be involved in your project.

New Lightbox

2009-02-08T10:12:00.006Z

Recently I've had a strong desire to go to back to doing some traditional, drawn animation, it's something I haven't done since Art College but always enjoyed. So I've bought a second-hand animation lightbox, hopefully this will help me with the animation I do at work as well as improve my drawing skills, which have been severely neglected over the last 8 years.

If they're not too embarrassing, I'll post the results here soon.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole

2009-01-27T07:18:00.006Z

I'm currently at Animal Logic in Australia, back where I animated on Happy Feet. I'm now working on their next animated feature The Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

Clym's Walk

2009-01-14T12:27:00.027Z

Clym Smith, an animation student at Ravensbourne college asked me to critique a walk he has done -

Excuse the pause at the end of the movie, that was accidentally added by me.

It is a good start and there are some nice poses in there. My first impression was that it was perhaps a bit fast, and maybe it needs to be inbetweened to make it feel a more natural speed.

As I watched it a few more times, a pose jumped out at me as looking a little odd. This one -

In this pose, the character is too off-balance and looks like he's falling over. It doesn't quite fit in the walk, and it makes the character feel as if he's tripping on something.

It also stands out in this composite of the walk. We can see the head is generally moving forward at a constant speed until this frame, when it suddenly shifts further forward and overlaps the next drawing.

So Clym, that would be the main thing I'd fix along with the speed. But I also thought I'd go through the other drawings and suggest some subtle ways to exaggerate the poses and movement you have.

As I've shown below, the up and down motion you have on the character is quite even. I would be tempted to push this into more of a bouncing ball motion.

Let's start by looking at the first pose in this sequence; the contact position. One thing I noticed is that his body is in a very neutral pose, it would liven the action up if this was altered, and we had a stronger change of shape occurring.

We can see this by drawing a line following the spine, this is our 'line of action'. At the moment the line is straight.

By simply pushing the line of action, and therefore the body, into a slight curve we create a stronger more interesting pose.

So, this is how I would alter the contact position. By adding a more dynamic line of action and also raising the body up. I've also straightened the rear leg to better follow the flow of the spine.

In the next pose, your 'down' or 'squash', I have pushed the line of action the other way. This will give us a change of shape when we play the animation which will add extra life to the walk. I have taken it to quite an extreme here, you may want to be more subtle.

I have also lowered the pose and changed the rear leg. In your drawing it felt as if the leg had shrunk a bit.

In the next pose, the crossover, I have kept some of the curve of the previous pose in the body. I have also changed the lifted foot slightly as I felt it had slightly too much drag in your drawing.

I haven't shown it here, but it would also be a good idea to show part of the hand or the elbow protruding outside the figure's silhouette. At the moment the arm is contained in the shape of the body which means we lose it in motion.

The next pose is the one we mentioned earlier. I pushed his lifted leg further forward, and flattened the toes of his rear foot to look like they are still in contact with the ground. I also changed the angle of his body, so it looks less like he is tripping up.

We then arrive at the opposite contact pose, which I have altered in the same way as the first.

Here is a composite of all my drawings over your original ones. As you can see the heads now have more of a constant motion forward.

While the character's vertical motion forms a bouncing ball curve.

One last thing I think would help the animation. In this drawing you have the arm straight with the wrist dragging as it moves forward, which is good. But you could create a very fluid motion if you then bend the joints the other way as the arm swings back. I have indicated in red a rough approximation of the shape that you might want.

This is called 'breaking joints', Richard Williams describes it very well in his book, The Animators Survival Kit.

And that's it. As I said before, the walk is working well and these are just small changes to add to what you've already got. Hope it has made sense!

Good luck and all the best,

Brendan

Batpod tests

2009-01-07T23:16:00.007Z

Happy New Year!

As The Dark Knight is now available on DVD I can now show you the pre-production tests I created of the Batpod. They had made a practical version but because of the huge wheels, the movement was very limited, especially in it's ability to turn. It became obvious that a computer generated version would be able to achieve much more dynamic movement.

This is the first test I created to show how flexible it could be. The idea is that the mechanism is gyroscopic, keeping the wheels flat to the ground while the rider leans into the turns.

Batpod 1 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

The next test I made was intended to show other aspects of the Batpod's movement. The jump shows how the machine's suspension might absorb impact. The next part shows how the batpod might recoil from the cannons firing, and the last part shows how the bike could lower to avoid an obstacle.

Batpod 2 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

This last animation is of something the director was keen to see work visually. He wanted the bike to drive up a wall, then it's body to twist round to land, ready to drive off in the opposite direction. This idea made it into the film.

Batpod 3 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

I enjoyed making these animations, and it was also a rare opportunity for me to do the rigging.

In the final version the Batpod's movement was toned down a lot from these initial tests. It looks much stiffer than how I envisioned it, which makes sense as it matches more closely up to the practical Batpod.

Walk Cycle

2008-12-16T16:38:00.022Z

One of the last things I did this term at Duncan of Jordanstone was give a Maya animation workshop, where I showed how to go about creating a basic walk cycle. I won't go into too much detail here, but will just show my approach to it. The following technique can be applied to many different walk cycles. Usually I would add more character or emotion to a walk, but for simplicity I've made a neutral male cycle.

I think it's important to start with some reference, ideally some live-action footage. Ordinarily I'd go through the footage, try to exaggerate the traits that make the cycle unique, but here I'm going to be making a reasonably faithful copy. The reference I'll be using is from a Muybridge book.

I start by creating one pose, this one -

Apologies for the quality of the scan, hopefully you can still see the image. This is normally called the contact position which is a good one to start with. The legs are at an extreme and also the body is at an important stage of transition - it has accelerated down into this position and from this pose, as the foot catches it's weight, it will start to decelerate.

If we now look at the balance in the pose, you can see that the body mass is reasonably centred, with a similar amount of the body on both sides of the red line. The hips are perhaps slightly further over the contacting (left) foot, were as the chest is lagging behind the action, with slightly more of it on the standing foot.

Now looking in detail at the pose, there are some important things to note; firstly, the contacting leg is straight. In the rear view picture you can see the hips have rotated round with the leg, and also tipped, so the hip's lowest corner is over the contacting leg. The chest counters the hip's rotations in both axises, and the opposite arm (to the leg) is in a forward position. Note that the legs are not vertical, they angle in slightly. There is also a change in angle from the leg to the foot too. In the profile picture we can see the chest and hips have rotated in opposite directions to arch the back.

Now we can create this pose in the computer. I am using a very nice free rig off the internet called Max. He has created by Peter Starostin and James Hunt and is available to download here

I like to use traditional animation charts so I can see were my keys and breakdowns are. I have now put my contact pose at frame 1, and the same pose at my last frame (43), therefore I can now be sure the walk will cycle seamlessly. This pose can still be edited, but you must be sure to copy any changes onto both frames. The next step is to create an exact opposite of your contact pose and place it in the middle of your cycle (22). Feet should be as accurate an opposite as possible to avoid foot slip later, while chest and arm positions can be slightly different. This will help make your cycle feel organic.

* When playblasting or rendering your cycle, adjust your time-line so you don't include both contact poses (i.e. frames 1-42).

Next comes the cross-over or passing position, so called because it is the point were the feet pass each other.

If we look at the balance of this pose, you can see the weight has shifted onto the standing leg, more of the body is on the left side of the red line.

If we look at it in more detail you can see that the hips have rotated to a more neutral position. However, one side has fallen as the foot has lifted, the lowest side is over the lifted foot, the chest once again counters this rotation. Other things to observe are that the standing leg is straight and therefore the body is higher than it was at the contact position. The lifted foot when viewed from front on is not straight to camera, there are subtle changes in angle from the upper leg to the lower leg, and again from the lower leg to the foot. The hands are at almost the same position but note their poses suggest drag to their direction, either moving forward or going backwards. In the side view you can also see the hips and chest are rotated so the back is not as arched as it was in the contact pose.

Now you can create this pose and it's opposite, then put it into your animation halfway between the contact poses.

The chart now looks like what we see pictured above.

With our key poses applied, our character is essentially walking, although rather crudely. All we need to do now is to add some breakdowns to help the sincerity of the animation.

The first breakdowns I like to add are the highest and lowest points of the body - seen here in these two pictures from our Muybridge reference. We can see that the standing leg is stretched up in the first picture and then, in the second picture, the landing leg is bent as it catches the weight of the body. It is worth noting that the left arm is higher and further forward than in our contact position. It is also worth noting that in the second picture the rear leg is still in contact with the ground. In a walk there is a moment when both legs are simultaneously in contact with the ground.

I've made a close up composite of the head in the two pictures to make the vertical motion clearer. As you can see the thicker white line is level with the bottom of the man's nose in the first picture were it is level with his brow in the second.

Here are my up and down breakdowns. Again, I create opposites of them.

And this shows where I have applied them to my animation. I have put my 'up' positions roughly half-way between my crossover and contact poses, but my 'down' breakdown is just a couple of frames after the contact keyframe. This is to give the animation a sense of weight and also serves to create a change in the timing.

Next I like to create a sense of follow-through in the body. By offsetting the down of the body with the down of the chest, head translation and head rotation. Much like I talked about in the bouncing ball lecture.

http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/bb_lecture/walk_05.mov

So, two frames after the hips lowest point, I've put the down position of the chest. Then two frames later, the head's lowest point (in translation - called 'neck' here) then 1 frame later, the lowest point in the head's rotation.

Walk cycle produced for animation workshop from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

And here is the walk cycle I created. I've tweaked some of the curves a little in the graph editor, and also cleaned up the arcs of the feet and hands. I would usually polish this further but I have left it quite rough to show the result of just following this simple formula.

Tooth Fairy

2008-12-09T21:56:00.006Z

As Hellboy 2 was released on DVD yesterday, I'm now allowed to show you some of my work from it.

Here is a early animation test of a Tooth Fairy from the film. They were tricky things to animate, We wanted them to move as both insects and quadrupeds. We also wanted to achieve a sense of menace and intensity in their movement. After many attempts I produced this stop-start motion led by the creature's head. Lead animator Gwilym Morris very kindly called it "the Rosetta Stone of Tooth Fairy animation".

Tooth Fairy test animation from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

More from the film to come soon!

Flour Sack Exercise

2008-12-05T13:36:00.014Z

For the last couple of weeks I've been helping the Level 2 animation students in Dundee with their Flour Sack Exercise. Here are some drawings I made in the process. Some of the poses are mine, and some are from the Illusion of Life and other sources.

Here are some quick thumbnail sketches I made, with rough inbetween charts, to demonstrate how a basic jump could be approached.

Sharon White, the Animation Module Leader, and I were very impressed by the standard of animations this year. Well done everyone!

Framestore Idents

2008-11-22T10:00:00.015Z

Since the final ident is now on Framestore's website I'm guessing it's alright to now show these.

Back in July this year Framestore employees were asked to put forward ideas for an ident for Framestore's new logo. The designer, Javier Mariscal, saw the letters as characters and I decided to try and make the letters' different personalities apparent in the way they move.

Framestore Ident Montage from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

I then created and put forward the following ideas and the first one here, Lemmings, was selected as the winner. I decided to try and make it stand out by having the letters die in the process of forming the logo. I was really surprised when they liked it.

Framestore 'Lemming' Ident from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

This next one is on a similar theme

Framestore 'roller' Ident from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

I also decided to do some more generic versions which ended up looking very similar to Framestore's final one. Since the bottom of the letters aren't aligned, I decided to change their size and then use perspective to create the illusion they are at different heights while still have them sit on the ground. I then applied a moving camera that arrives at the only position the logo can be read from. At the same time the letters make their way into their positions.

Framestore 'Perspective' Ident from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

A shorter, simpler version of the above idea -

Framestore 'Perspective (Short)' Ident from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

However, soon after 'Lemmings' was chosen as the design for Framestore's new ident, it was decided that perhaps mass suicide wasn't a suitable theme with which to represent the company. We tried a few variations on it but sadly eventually the idea was abandoned in favour of something much simpler. Then, as my workload for The Tale of Despereaux increased, I had to hand over the project to my good friend, and animator extraordinaire, Craig Bardsley to finish. Although I was disappointed not to finish the project, it was good fun creating the ideas, and Craig has done a great job with the final version.

Georgie Nicholson Website

2008-11-11T17:15:00.005Z

I've recently finished building a website for the singer/songwriter Georgie Nicholson.
Check it out here -

http://www.georgienicholson.com/

She's playing tonight at The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh. Come along if you're around, it's going to be awesome.

The Tale of Despereaux (2008) - Trailer #2

2008-11-08T08:58:00.004Z

The latest trailer for The Tale of Despereaux.

I'm chuffed that one of my shots made the cut. It's very short, but just about readable - The shot of three mice looking shocked, when Despereaux says "The rats have taken the princess".

Bouncing Ball Lecture

2008-10-18T12:41:00.009Z

I've written up my first lecture at Dundee on the boucing ball. I've put it online for those who missed it or for anyone who wants to refresh their memory.

http://bouncingballlecture.blogspot.com/

It's on blogger so people can make comments and ask questions.

It's my take on a lecture shown to me by my animation supervisor, Michael Eames, when I first arrived at Framestore. He recieved it from Phil Nibbelink when working on the film Balto, who in turn, was taught this by Disney's Frank Thomas.

Back to Dundee

2008-10-11T14:58:00.004Z

I'm currently lecturing animation students at my old Art College, Duncan of Jordanstone, in Dundee.

Last Day on Despereaux

2008-09-12T16:40:00.003Z

Well done everyone.

The Tale of Despereaux crew, earlier today. I'm on the right, about half way up, wearing a green top.

Some Animation

2008-08-19T13:01:00.004Z

There is now actually some animation on my animation website. Nothing particularly new or exciting, but it's a start. Unfortunately, there are some issues with the pages, the elements are jumping around a bit. Fellow Despereauxian Chris Page says 'framesets' are the answer. Could be something to employ in the big overhaul I'm planning.

Showreel 2008

2008-08-12T09:18:00.006Z

I've finally got round to putting my Latest Showreel on my website. I need to do a lot more updates to the site, it's been rather neglected lately as I've kind of gone off the colour scheme. I would really like to give the entire thing an overhaul, but don't have the time at the moment ... Hmm, perhaps I should have gone for something more neutral.

Animator on The Dark Knight ... apparently

2008-08-04T09:21:00.024Z

I went to the cinema last night to see the superb Dark Knight. At the end I decided to hang around to see which of my friend's names I could spot ... and was amazed to see my name scroll past! I couldn't believe it, I spent a few weeks doing some animation tests for the Batpod when I first started at Double Negative. But didn't work on any final shots, I was really not expecting to get a credit on this film.

A huge Thank You to Paul Franklin and everyone else at Double Negative who have given me this very generous acknowledgment. The film was brilliant and I'm delighted to have my name associated with it. A big congratulations to everyone who worked on it.

The Tale of Despereaux Trailer

2008-07-02T11:36:00.002Z

Despereaux

2008-05-29T15:04:00.004Z

Now working on The Tale Despereaux at Framestore Feature Animation.

HellBoy 2 : The Golden Army Teaser Trailer

2007-12-21T11:12:00.005Z

New trailer of Hellboy 2, featuring some of my amazing insect cycles.

Hellboy

2007-09-24T11:31:00.001Z

Currently working on Hellboy 2: The Golden Army at Double Negative.

Wrapped

2007-09-24T10:50:00.001Z

Happy Feet Animation Crew on the day of the production wrap with Director George Miller (centre). From left to right - Chris Cartagena, Simon Pickard, Andrew Silke, Paul Perott, Jim Dodd, David Williams, Tim Gibson, Victoria Livingstone, Amita Sahgal, Pato Ducaud, Jon Turburfield, Christian So, Myself and Christel Pougeoise.

Happy Feet Boogie Wonderland

2007-09-21T21:56:00.004Z

Here's a bit of Happy Feet. I was responsible for Mumble's performance at the start of this sequence, from his Hispanic entrance until he says "It is me ... sorta".