Gobelins Summer School: Kyle Balda

So, I'm well aware of the fact that Gobelins Summer School already is sometime back, but I would still like to update some about it. I'm planning on adding some pictures and add a story a day about it per teacher.
It'll all be short stories about the days we had their masterclasses.

Today I'll be writing about the lesson of / days with Kyle Balda.
Kyle Balda was supposed to teach fort two or three days and give an acting assignment, but he had a really tight production schedule and so it happend he only did the opening. Which was too bad, but it was quite interesting and we had a really cool teacher to replace him (Mike L. Murphy), so after all it wasn't to bad (and it helps that I have no idea what I really missed).

After receiving the email with the informatie that Kyle would only be doing the opening I thought he would just come in, say hi, tell a little bit about the summer school and leave. But! He still gave a bit of a lesson and told some interesting stuff about working on The Lorax, which was just awesome.

He told some interesting (sometimes basic) things an animator should know when they start working on something. Like the main goal in animation:
Create empathy by the audience for the character. A lump of clay could be thinking, feeling and everything. Get the feeling across!
And that you should always listen to what the character wants. You need to know your character that well to know what he or she themselves would logically do in a certain situation.

What I found really interesting is that he told us about two things, physicality and acting. Those are the two things you use in animation. They can be separated into a few different things. Physicality is either right or wrong, but acting really shows your talent as a animator.

And for a big part of his masterclass he told us about editing and quoted some things about Walter Murch's book In the Blink of an Eye. Which was really cool, because at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy you are supposed to read the book to earn some points on your Film- and Literaturelist.
He recommended the book, said we should all read it. Especially the part about the order of priority to make a cut.

Further more he recommended we use his YouTube channel for online tutorials. Here's a link to his channel:
Kyle Balda's channel


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