Room ready for rendering

Feedback from Martin: background looks great, but the hands of the man need some illumination on them, coming from the direction of the lampshade - a small spotlight with yellow in it placed near to the hands, but aimed as if the light comes from roughly the direction of the lamp (probably need to be a bit closer to the camera than it would be if there was a straight line between the lamp and hands), and that would pick out the fingers and the piano well at present we can't see them.

Pixar's unusual creative process

Ever since I started learning all about computer graphics and animation, Pixar films have been a great source of inspiration to me.
I thought it would be interesting to explore it's unusual creative process and discover the reasons behind the smashing success of its productions. Every Pixar blockbuster requires years of brainstorming and fine-tuning. A staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians move from project to project. As a result, the studio has built a team of movie makers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets. The animators and director often meet to discuss scenes and animations in their movies. I have learned from Pixar that being open to comments and criticism is a must.

    

    

Here are some of my favorite quotations from people at Pixar:

It’s important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up, we know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.” - Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3.

“What you have to do in animation... is direct the audience’s eyes to where you want them to go, to not just soak in the environment, but feel it.” - Graham Walters, producer of Finding Nemo

"There’s never a wrong idea. You just keep throwing stuff out...inevitably there are elements of different things that inspire a character or environment.” - John Lasseter

Creative and Production Process II

Animation Process:


To animate a character, I had to analyze and practice the animation principles, one by one, from simple to more complex. Bill Evans states: “Animation in its purest form follows the rhythms of music and speaks to the same universal mind. Think of the funniest walk cycle you have ever seen and try to put it into words. You can’t. It doesn't matter what language you speak. Great poses and pure movement speaks to our humanity- the part of us that operates below the verbal level.”

Before the actual animation phase starts, I had to decide which personality each character will convey, so I could get my animation to be as real as possible. the goal behind acting for animation is a feeling of spontaneity.

Using footage references is very important for character animation. This is why I recorded myself and a friend acting and doing the desired motions then used the footage as a reference to help me in my animation, especially with the “timing and spacing” principle. It’s very essential for the animator to be somehow good in acting and to be able to get a sense of how the body moves.

Creative and Production Process I:

Since I chose to make a short 3D film as a major project, my individual creative process consisted of three phases, pre-production, production, and post-production: Storyboarding, concept and character design, art direction, modelling, shading, texturing, lighting, rigging,  skinning, animation, and of course, continuous research. Time management was also crucial in the creative and production process. Gantt chart was created to manage tasks effectively and to allow smoother planning for tasks at hand.

A short animation will only be successful if its story captivates the audiences; the rendered frames are not behind the success. A big part of the creative process was spent on research and pre-storyboarding. Looking at John Lasseter’s earliest short-films has also been a great source of inspiration to me. He was one of the first animators who emphasized on “memory” in 3D. 

Learning process II

The second part of my learning process is that I understood that the technique and skill used are not the only things that I need. Since the start of the year, this fact changed the way I work and design my projects.


As a student in animation, focusing on the technical aspect is not the most important thing. Learning new software, tricks and techniques should not always prime over research or documentation. I have learned that inspiration, stories, characters, words, are as important as the methodology adopted. The most successful animators were driven by inspiration, by the belief that adults can also be entertained by animation. I believe that animation can be a medium that has impact on the whole society and would certainly help transmit the artist’s message to it.


Earlier in my blog, I gave an example of how John Lasseter was inspired by the work of the Japanese animator Miyazaki and his influence not only on children, but also the adults in the society. I have learned that a good animator also needs to have an eye for acting, for facial expression, for different tones to give life and emotions to characters they create.

Two key points I stressed on:

- My characters should be alive
- They should convey an emotion, an experience.


The biggest challenge in animation is to give life to an object, or create a character and make it convey emotion and move like a human being, animal or elements of nature. Such work necessitates an understanding and study of life around us.


While working on my final project, I exposed myself to the principles of animation and their application in movies, specially the earliest short movies created by Pixar (Luxo Jr., The adventures of Andre and Wally B., and many others). I had developed a critical eye and would analyze other artists’ animation to evaluate it and get ideas for my own animation. This naturally led me to find inspiration in others and apply those principles in my own work.

Jonah Lehrer’s book: “Imagine"

I enjoyed reading Jonah Lehrer’s book “Imagine”, in which he highlights a part of the creative process some people forget.

Lehrer declares that the feeling of frustration is an essential part of the creative process. “When we tell stories about creativity, we tend to leave out this phase. We neglect to mention those days when we wanted to quit, when we believed that our problem was impossible. Instead, we skip straight to the breakthrough. We tell the happy ending first”, says Lehrer.

The danger of this scenario is that the act of feeling frustrated is an essential part of the creative process. Before we can find the answer — before we can even know the question — we must be immersed in disappointment, convinced that a solution is beyond our reach. We need to have wrestled with the problem and lost. Because it’s only after we stop searching that an answer may arrive.

Lehrer, Jonah (2012), Imagine, How creativity works, Canongate Books Ltd; Export & Airside ed edition, Page 201.

Playblast 1

Playplast+music of the first scene, 5 shots