Laphoria

Monday, February 18, 2008

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.