Pixar Worship

From the Pixar Visit:

Dylan’s Animation Workshop:

• Take as many acting classes as possible if you want to be an animator! It will teach you about yourself and how to act through your character.
• Bad acting is presenting: it doesn’t tell anything about the character or build their performance.
• Modern Acting is all psychology
• The nice poses come AFTER the acting. Everything is motivated by that connection.
• The line doesn’t matter. It’s all about the SUBTEXT. *Listen to the line and write down all the subtext for the character, scene, atmosphere etc.

Tracking Character Arcs across a Sequence:

• 6-10 animators will work on any given sequence. There needs to be a plan beforehand about what is happening in all the shots together, so that you don’t mess up your plotlines.
• *Status is important – who’s in a dominant position in the narrative.
• Character Arcs – the development of a relationship between characters. [Ex: Linguini and Collette as she teaches him to cook.

On inspiration:

• Whatever speaks to you – go after it. Don’t go after other peoples’ dreams/muses/ambitions/inspirations etc. T
• Trust yourself. It’s what matters to you that counts.
• 2D requires more discipline because it takes more thought to create a moving/living character in 2D than 3D. So learning a lot of things from a traditional animation and art will strengthen what you do virtually.
• Look through lots of art – find things you like and then figure out WHY you like them.
• Find what speaks to YOU!
• Distill down the fundamentals of any scene you’re animating. Nail those fundamentals and you’ll be successful – what causes it, what comes after it, etc. Think big picture but simplify.
• You will (probably) never nail a shot in one try.

On getting into a studio:
Show your personality in your animation. Animation without soul is worthless. Pixar can teach you mechanics.

And a warning:
With success can come complacency. TAKE RISKS! Do NOT become complacent.