Masterclass Drawing for Animators

Had an amazing and very inspiring day today!
The studio I work at organised a masterclass given by Samantha Youssef (former Disney animator) on drawing for animation. It was great! There was a model as well so got to do some life drawing and decided to redo a couple of them in Photoshop.
Learned a lot of new techniques and ways to approach life drawing.

New animation "Only one who works here" Work In Progress part 01.

I've decided to post animation sequences here as well as drawings (and maybe knitwork). The animation things I'm working on will all be only things that I make in my spare time for practice.

There will be sound with this one, but its not timed yet, which is why it's silent for now. This is just really quick layout / first touches of blocking the animation in. I basically have only just set up the environment and chosen which camera I want to have.
I did shoot reference for it, but I will not post it online. Maybe when the entire shot is done I'll post it in a progression shot.

Animation Showreel 2016

Merry Chirstmas

Girl Portrait

Finally a new drawing, after about three months... I didn't have the time to draw anytime sooner, since I had to graduate and so finish the graduation film and about two weeks after I went on a holiday to the USA for about a month, which was great. Then, arriving in Vancouver (Canada) had to find an apartment and work. Found the apartment rather quickly and had a great time at SIGGRAPH and applied for a studio, which I had an interview with last week, with great result. But I'll post some more about that when I actually start working.

Wanted to try another style, more paint-y.
I don't know yet how to add this to the hair, but it's getting somewhere.
Photoshop, speedpaint.

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Character Animation Showreel!

My new showreel! Hopefully things will start going now. I graduated about two weeks ago. Tomorrow my boyfriend and I will be heading to America for a month, ending our trip in Vancouver, Canada. We'll be staying there for a year to go to work! Exciting!

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Old village

When I was in Valence I started making this as a practice. It's gonna be a short animation. Just set it up to practice almost everything. A bit of modeling (scenes as well as characters), working with surface shaders, lighting, rigging etc. By now I thnk the town is kinda done. I'm currently working on the character -----

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During the Internship at TeamTO

I've really been neglecting my blog the last couple of months, so I thought it'd be a good time to revive it a bit. Planning to start posting drawings on this one, and maybe notes and stuff if I've got some interesting ones. But for now;

In the last post I made I was telling about getting an internship at TeamTO. By now the internship is almost done (just a little less than a month left) and it has been great! The work is incredibly cool, the environment the best and the people are great. And I learned so much during this internship (starting May 6th).

In the beginning I had a lot of lessons and really got to know a lot more about character animation itself. Since July I've been working as an animator on Babar and the Adventures of Badou.

I will have about a month left to fully enjoy working here in this great team. I'm going back to The Netherlands on September 28th. And on October 1st school will be starting again. My final year at The Netherlands Film and Television Academy!

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Internship TeamTO

In January I got a final agreement for my internship. This summer (from May until October) I will be an character animation intern at TeamTo in Bourg-les-Valence, France.
I am really excited about this and can't wait to start overthere. I will be living at Le Valency and got an appartment of my own. I really wanted to work at a studio in France, because France is about the best country in animation in Europe.
When I start at TeamTo (by the 6th of May) I will first of all have to practice my animation skills a lot more (shame on me~) and do some bouncing balls and cycle exercises. When they find my ready I will start to practice on some shots from the series and maybe the feature on which they are working. At the end of my internship I should be able to work there on my own shots. Yay!

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Science Center NEMO

I've been busy lately with making an assigment / short animation for Science Center NEMO.
I have finished it on January 7th and they used it immediatally the day after :) Yay.

It had to be a short animation (20 - 30 seconds) with the theme "horror / suspense" for an audience of children age 8 to 10. It will be used in a couple of different countries as a schoolassigment. The children will make a "soundbox" with which they can make soundtracks. They will get to watch the animation and have to make a soundtrack for it.

NEMO was happy with the result. I think it could have been much better, but I had way too little time to make it they way I wanted it to be. So with the tight deadline and everything, I think it's pretty much okay.

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New Showreel (2012)

I've been busy creating my latest showreel, trying to get a scholarship and getting an internship for next May till October. Because I had a good letter of motivation I got my scholarship, hooray! But I need to find an internship before the 8th of February in order to still be able to officially get it.

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Lipsync

One of the two assignments at Gobelins Summer School was a lipsync / acting assignment.
This is what I made of it, I guess.. Well, it's never really done.

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Update from the last couple of weeks

School has started again for about two months. We already have autumn break, but honestly, I'm okay with that. I'm working on setting up a showreel and I really welcome the time off. We don't really have time off anyways, because they gave us a big homework assingment in Houdini FX. Which is kinda cool, but not really my piece of cake.

I just kinda finished my lipsync animation and will start at something new any moment. I'm gonna include parts of Spirit of Necropolis (which I worked at during an internship) and maybe a shot from the commercial we worked at at school. I don't really know what else to include, but I need to be finished by the end of next week.

The first few weeks of school we worked at a commercial for Bionade. It won't be on television (fake assignment), but it was really cool to work at and turned out nice. I like working on commercials a lot better than I expected. It was a lot of fun and I like the tight deadlines.

On October 29th the children's serie The Tumblies will be on television. I worked a bit on it when I was at my internship last summer at NMtrix Studio. I'm really curious about it.
This week it was in premiere this week at Cinekid Festival.

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Gobelins Summer School: Graduation

 

The Graduation

 The Graduation

The Graduation

The Teachers

The Classmates

 

The Diploma

It was awesome!

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Gobelins Summer School: Yoshi Tamura

Already the last masterclass.
These two weeks at Gobelins were over far too soon. I would like it to be for at least two months, instead of only two weeks. It's now about 2 to 3 months ago and I still miss Gobelins. The best experience ever!

The last workshop we got was the one of Yoshi Tamura. Yes, you should really click the link and see what he did at IMDB. His work is awesome! He worked together with Glen Keane on Tarzan, worked on The Hunchback of Notredame (Quasimodo), Princess and the Frog (Tiara), Igor and made Reflexion (which won an awesome price at Siggraph.

Yoshi told us some things about acting and interstiong things about how to really express emotions. I was really surpised to hear that Yoshi never works with the graph editor in Maya. He says he's used to do everything by eye, probably because of his 2D background.
And he gave an interesting perspective about how the background itself is a character too.

Most of the masterclass he did he filled with showing us his work and telling stories about the studios and work he did and how he got in. It was really interesting to listen to him and honestly, I was honored to get a masterclass from Yoshi. It was epic.

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Gobelins Summer School: Alexandre Heboyan

The before last teacher at Gobelins Summer School 2012 was Alexandre Heboyan. He taught us most about the different kind of filmindustries (America vs. Europe), camera and  acting and movement during lipsync / acting in different bodyparts.

Alexandre is working on a movie of his own. He's going to be de director of Mune which is going to start production next year. He explained a little about Mune, told us the synopsis (it is totally awesome! About myths about the sun and the moon, you should really keep eye on this project) and showed some tests and concept art they had 'till now.

During his lessons he had some really cool interaction with everyone, played out some examples and told us about energy levels in the body. I read some more about it, but I still need to get into this part more.

The parts I found most interesting is when he told us about the importance in the movement when using lipsync. I was suprised to know that the lips aren't that much important at all. First the eyes (mask), silhouette, shoulders and neck (and maybe even hips before that if you see the hips) and then come the lips. And always to put the movement first; what I mean by this is that when you hear an "O", put the shape of the "O" two frames before you hear the sound. Only then it's right for the eye.

When you see a full body, hips are the most important. I was well aware of that. What I wasn't aware of was that he told us he read an article about some kind of test. In the test they only showed footage of the hips / hipmovement of certain people. The conclusion was that relatives and close friends can recognize people they know only from the movement of the hips. That's just amazing! So always work on the hips and try to give your character a great sense of weight.

Alexandre gave us an acting / lipsync assignment afterwards and helped us out in the workshops that followed. Learned a lot during that time. 

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Gobelins Summer School: Mike L. Murphy

On the Friday and the Monday we Mike L. Murphy came to give us some masterclasses.
His masterclasses were really interesting and above all, motivating. It immediatally got me to want to go to work on my stuff and make it look great. Plus, he worked on lots of big studio's, but he told us he applied for jobs over a 100 times before he really got into the industry. That gave me some courage to stay focusing. Just work harder, and keep holding on.

He first told about his work and his time at CalArts, also about his film with which he applied to the studio's: Pig Out (made in 1997):

With this he told us how important it was to add time. Always give the character time to think. And he told a lot about the "want", always let your character have a want. That's what makes us be alive and how you can get an emotional curve. The first day he told most about acting and comedy. Too bad we only had class untill 13.00h 'cause it was really interesting. But in the afternoon he did some more "lectures" in the workshops, live animating.

The next day the biggest part of the story was about comedy, marketing and selling yourself, be a brand. I really learned so much from this. When I got home a made a few important changes to my website and asked for some feedback on my businesscard and adjusted that one to. Finally got some businesscards printed when I got back home, yay!

Later on in my blog I'll post some more information about Mike L. Murphy, since I joined his Monthly Mentoring lessons. You can find some more information about him and his lessons overhere.

 

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Gobelins Summer School: Fred Nagorny

We had three days masterclasses of Fred Nagorny and I have to say that I could do with a lot more days. His masterclasses were really suprising and very interesting. He has a whole different approach to animation than what I'm used to.
Fred is the only permanent teacher at Gobelins. All other teacher the students usually get are people who get hired for a short time and work in the animation industry on a regular base.

The main part of Fred's masterclasses were about walkcycles. He used Muybridge as a reference. Muybridge was a well known photographer who made series of pictures right after eachother so we could see the movement of the subject (both humans and animals).

We got to use the walkcycle of Muybridge and make it into animation, a realistic one, a semi-realistic one and a cartoony one. All those types of movement should be on a cartoon character as well as on a realistic character so you could clearly see how the difference of the looks work on both characters.

The expression in the movement (the walkcycle) should be clearly visible in all directions.
He gave some really cool tips, which I wasn't really aware of. They do sound really logical, but when we did it at the Filmacademy (at which I study) we just had to redo it and they never told us;
If you want your realistic walk to be cartoony (in CG) just stretch the curves. Make incredible poses, double certain angles and you instantly got  a cartoony pose or movement.

Like I said; Fred had a really different approach than what I was used to. It was much more mathematical. The most things he makes he just approach at the mathematical way because, he says, you can always do everything by feeling, but you don't know if it is exactly right, if it's really the way it's supposed to be when it comes down to realism. If you work mathematically, it is always right.

Fred's approach to walkcycles.

Fred's formula for adding squash and stretch. It works everytime and is quite awesome.

I was aware of the fact that a realistic human is about 7½ heads high (7 'till 8, so lets just say 7½), but he told the cartoony one is 3½ heads and semi-realistic 5½.

It's quite interesting to know. Just like your main character always has it's walkcycle on 24fps. If you make different characters that surround your main charachter, your maincharachter will always be de standard. For example; Robin Hood (Disney) walks at 24fps, he's the main character. The Sheriff walks at 32fps. He's bigger than Robin. Fred told us that all different kind of species have different timing for their walkcycle (which sounds quite logical), because they need more time to wait before their foot hits the ground again.

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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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Internship NMtrix

A day after I got home from Gobelins Summer School and a few days holiday in Paris I started an internship for over the summer. I have to do an internship for my school next year, from May untill September, but I thought I could use some more practice. Plus the fact that I'll be able to use the skills from the summerschool right away. 

So when I saw that NMtrix Animation Studio in Alkmaar (about 15 minutes by train from the place I live) were hiring I asked them if they could use someone for over the summer and they offered me an internship.
Eventhough it's been for only a short time I do have the feeling I learned a lot. For example; I've never worked in 3Ds Max before, but now I can work with it (at least for animating). And I think I did progress during the time I worked there (I've now got only one week left). It was a good experience too, to just see what it's like to work at a studio who mostly work (at the time) for a children's serie and sort of commercial work. They work so fast! The Tumblies (the children's serie) are about 90 seconds, and usually make one episode in just a few days.

I worked on some commercial things, the Tumblies and an "Olympic Art"-thing. Art is the mascotte of NMtrix. We made some short animations to celebrate the Olympics.

This is one mine:

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