Tips from "Ultimate guide to Animation"

Andrew Gordon
1. Planning, is as important as the Animation process itself.
2. You character doesn't always need to be moving. Hold poses and act within that pose.
3. Avoid cliches gestures. Try to find something more fresh and natural.
4. When polishing splines, try to group them together, ie. root, spine, neck head.

Dave Pimantel (head of story at Dreamworks)
"Allow your characters to really believe in their story and react to it in a way only they would. Let your audiences see their choices on screen and the effects of those choices."

Applying the tip form "Drawn to life" by Walt Stanchfield to "draw verbs not nouns" I could implement this into my planning process, by assigning a verbs to each of my key poses. This ties in with another tip from Digital Tutors to animate the whole motion, not just a series of poses.

"Animators survivl kit" by Richard Williams
One mistake allot of animators make when starting out, is to try and cram too much into too short a time. The remedy he suggested is simple to "go twice as slow".

Kenny Roy

Ed Hooks Acting for Animators Workshop

Allot of the material in the talk, I had already read in his book. However it was still a very informative and inspiring day. Form my notes I have compiled a checklist of sorts, to help me "ask the right questions" when planning an animation.  

"How are we all the same?"  

A good performance = Engaging Empathy 

People only empathize with emotions (not situations)  

Aim for empathy NOT sympathy. (If a character is too pathetic and just rolls over, the audience will no longer identify with them.)  

"Who is your audience?" 

This should impact geatly on how you approach your performance.  

"What is your character doing?"  

You should be able to stop your animation at any frame and answer this question clearly. 

ACTION in pursuit of an OBJECTIVE, whilst overcoming an OBSTICLE.  

"Where is the conflict?" 

Conflict can be with another character, yourself, or the situation. Theatrical reality must have some source of conflict. Good storytelling also involves at least one "adrenalyn moment", something the character will remember when they are 80.  

"What happened before? What going to happen?" 

Scenes begin in the middle.  

"Would the character do that?"  

Don't just put something in there because it’s a nice pose or you think its funny. Think logically about the characters behavior. 

Rendering Tips form Digital Tutors

As rendering is the last job, I sometimes leave it as an after thought and keep working on the animation itself until the last possible second. While that is the focus of the shot, I am aware that a nicer render would frame my work better. So I looked up a few tips on better Rendering.

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/5-rendering-tips-animators-adding-final-touches-demo-reel/

1. Use motion blur, but very sparingly, and don't rely on it to fix problems in your shot.
(also when using motion blur you must be sure that your curves are smooth, otherwise it can appear glitchey)

2. Use lighting that will enhance the mood of your scene.

"Use Image Based Lighting if you have a body mechanics shot that doesn’t require background elements or any set pieces, like a walk cycle, you can utilize a simple image based light setup to achieve a good looking render in a very short amount of time. While it may not be a photorealistic result, it can still be a lot better than the simple playblast or animation preview.
In order to get a good result, try utilizing a simple ramp as your background image and choose two colors that complement each other. This will provide a nice, even light distribution for your shot. Once you are happy with that, you can incorporate final gather to increase the render quality. Doing this provides a nice render with a soft background color, and each frame can be rendered in just a few seconds rather than a few minutes if you were to try a more complex light source.
As mentioned above, this image based lighting technique is great for body mechanics shots because it won’t cast any deep shadows and will provide an even light source."

3. Don't over complicate things, the focus is still on your animation so don't spend days rendering.

4. Set up Render passes

5. Render as an image sequence.
I always do this because that the way i was taught, but I didn't actually know why it was better. (if you render as a movie file and something goes wrong, you can end up loosing the whole thing, rather than just afew frames.)

Mime research and Ideas

Strange little story, but Martin Freeman is a terrific actor, so its a good reference even just for facial reactions.





I really like the idea of showing a mime argument or fight. However that may be a little too ambitious for the time i have, so it would probably be best to just have the one character animated really well. But i could still show the character getting angryer with an object throughout the scene. 
................................................................................................................................................................
these first few examples were of mimes in storys and how then can bve used in storytelling. Next i will look at examples of really good mime performances., 

Boris Amarantov-

I had never heard of him before but hes brilliant!

charly chaplin
buster keaton
Harpo Marx





I really like the idea of showing an object acting in a way that it shouldn't. ie. a really heavy balloon, or something trying to escape. this could easily be done by replacing the balloon with a bowling ball for example in the references.