2019 Animation Tricks of the Trade

[Music] hello and welcome what we have for you next is you know I who here has been to the tricks of the trade before yeah so this is I could start this off with spewing some random facts but there are six animators with me up on stage so we're gonna jump right into it and I think you're gonna find it more enjoyable because it's historically our top rated talk of the animation boot camp the tricks of the trade we're start starting with you I told him I wasn't gonna introduce him I'm not just rude this is Jake Clark hey everybody I'm Jake I worked on cap head and I'm now working on the upcoming Cup head DLC most of my tips come from my traditional animation experience they will be the most useful for the few traditional animators in the room but

that said I'll try to make the tips useful for 3d 3d animators as well first tip nail down your pose your main poses as soon as you can I had a lot of trouble with this robot before I started doing this I wish I had my first attempts but they were not worth keeping I used to spend too much time in the rough stages of my animations without finalizing any of the main poses until I had already done a lot of animating but then sometimes I would find that because I hadn't fully fleshed out the major keys I didn't notice serious problems and I would often have to fix a lot of my animation if not start over so these days I like to nail things down early because it prevents some problems down the line and it eliminates the uncertainty of whether my animation will work or not I find the most stressful period of animating especially on a deadline is the time up until I know for sure that the animation is going to work I know that once the poses are nailed down and they work at the very least I won't have to start over and I can relax a little bit now for 3d animators I'd

summarize this tip as focus on the poses before you focus on the motion if you can work that way I know some 3d animators will do things like animate the torso first throughout the whole animation and go from there I'm Way out of my element moving on next tip consider the motion of each element of your character before animating between the poses a good way to avoid problems down the line in your animation is to consider each part of your character in advance and not just jump into it and pray that things work out for example with this animation I had to really think how will this snake move how will that snake move how will that snake move how will that snake move and oh my god there's another one to thinking about each part I could make sure that everything moves together nicely and that there are no problems like two snakes moving together in the same way at the same time the snakes awkwardly overlapping each other things like that if I didn't think I had I could have found that there were a lot of issues once I was already deepen animating the more you figure out

before diving into animate into animating the better your animation will be because you're animating thoughtfully for 3d folks I recommend the same thing having a plan for each piece of the character and thoughtfully placing everything according to that plan as you go along if you don't you may go from steps to splined and see that some of the some parts of the character move yeah good enough and just keep it that way the more intention you have the better next tip ruff your pose is light and push when tying down I think I and many others have a subconscious tendency to hold things back just a little bit even when we think that we're pushing them so I often find even to this day my first attempt at a pose or drawing isn't quite pushed as far as it could be here's an example of a face that I roughed to show what I mean by this after roughing I went over it clean but I pushed things just a little bit you can see if you look closely the eyebrow the eyebrows go down a tiny bit more in the middle the

corners of the mouth go just a bit higher and the bottom of the mouth goes a little bit lower and I find almost always when I do this it tends to make things a little bit better and not a little bit worse and for this tip for the 3d folks I just say after you post something out just try pushing things a little bit you don't know it's too far unless until you try it and unlike on on paper you can just undo sort of next tip keep your animation sincere I think it's much more important to keep your characters animating sincerely than it is to try to pack the animation with as much entertaining motion as possible here's an example from Princess Mononoke the motions are pretty simple her head turns just a bit her body subtly tenses as she spits the blood then she adjusts her posture and wipes her mouth with a simple motion of her arm she doesn't need to ham it up with a lot of extra movement because that would take you out of the story you want people to believe in your characters as if they were real and see them as alive you don't want

people to be pulled from that illusion by too much purposeless movement you want every movement to have purpose not just to show off that you know how to overshoot things in this example nothing is superfluous Simba poses his eyes because the weird monkey man is dropping some gunk on his head he stretches out and Wiggles his nose because he's preparing to sneeze and he overshoots with his face because sneezing is a surprising burst of force and it causes your face to overshoot it's important to make use of all of the animation principles that you can just as long as they actually add to your animation and don't distract or go against what the animation needs to accomplish last tip contrast contrast is one of the most important things not only in animation but in almost everything and I think about it a lot when animating if you have posed a start out fast and easing to pose B and then you have posed beeves start out fast and easing to pose C and C to D it will be distractingly boring who will put the audience into a coma on sight it would be so boring that's why I didn't make an

example I'm trying to protect you in music you need the contrast of high loads and note and no load and low notes in cooking you need sweet and you need bitter and so in animation you need fast and slow movement steady and erratic movement big and small movement without any contrast life would be very boring life needs contrast and so it is animation that's it for me thanks everybody [Applause] hello everyone I'm Sophie Evans I'm an animator at the molasses flood previously at Sony Santa Monica with Melissa and today I'm going to be going over my personal animation philosophies gonna be quickly going over the importance of workspace some camera tips and some lessons from yoga tip number one make your workspace work for you when I say workspace I'm talking about sitting economically making sure your wrists aren't straining using scripts

and hotkeys to automate as much as possible that sort of thing this is what Maya looks like the first time you open it up you're presented with 8,000 tools to handle a billion possible tasks so it's your job to curate and make sure you're being as efficient as possible with which tools you're using and how your tools are arranged it seems pretty obvious but you want to make sure you're set up for success before we even start animating an efficient workspace is gonna make you faster which is going to make you a more valuable animator as animators we do a lot of repetitive operations throughout the day so if you can cut a few seconds each time that's gonna save you a lot of time in that long term we want to keep thinking about the long-term and work smart more than hard our wrists are essential to our livelihoods and our si carpal tunnel these are real threats we need to be diligent about preventing and we can do that with the proper workspace and so that I say consider switching to a tablet or a vertical mouse at least might feel weird or slow you down temporarily but for me it has sped up my workflow probably more than anything else so if you can give it a shot I

highly recommend it as far as animation tools go there's tons of great stuff out there so I just wanted to highlight some scripts that I use a lot I use a lot of stuff from Aaron Kressel who is a animation tools lead at Pixar on his site he's got a bunch of stuff if you work having the graph editor there's lots of scripts for flipping curves pushing polling curves making loops based on nearby keys really great stuff if you work having the graph editor go to his site check that out there might be something there to speed up your workflow tip number two let's talk about cameras I know we don't all have the ability to have animatable cameras in our games but if you do learning more about the features of the camera can help bring your animation to the next level we all understand how important composition is but do we understand focal length or depth of field learn these things just like composition a length is going to evoke a certain feeling or mood you want to make sure you're using the correct one that's going to emphasize what you're already trying to say in your shots shots gonna feel more dramatic or more intimate depending on a focal length every piece

of the camera is a decision that we make and by leaving the camera at default settings that's the decision to but somebody else has made it for you so learn these pieces so that you can better make the decisions for yourself and again if you have the ability to have a camera really take advantage of that and emphasize action with camera movement this is a really early rough blocking of a camera sink move from God of War you can see especially when we remove the background elements that kratos doesn't actually move within the frame very much so on a later pass what I did was basically swung the camera left and right during the high action moments to put Kratos closer to the edges of the frame so that he takes up more space on the big movements and you can see how that compares with the before and after so really take advantage if you have the ability to have animatable camera okay tip number three what the heck does yoga have to do with animation well one reason I love yoga so much is because the things you learn in a class are really applicable

to all areas of your life one thing you hear all the time and you know the class that I really love is go to the uncomfortable I know it's a little cheesy and we've heard it a lot but we often gravitate towards the things that were already good at so but we're not going to grow as much if we only do those things that were comfortable with so next time you're taking on an animation task try to take on something that scares you a little bit or something that challenges you maybe something you're not quite sure you can do I think it's good for us to be in over our heads every once in a while but you need to understand the difference between uncomfortable and painful you want to go to the uncomfortable but not to the painful find where that edge is for you and tread along that we don't want to leave our comfort zone because we're afraid of failure but don't forget it's okay to fail we've all done it lots of times failing is the best way to learn next time it happens to you just be grateful you're given an opportunity to learn something something I like to think about is failure doesn't have to be the opposite of success failure can be a

stepping stone on the weights success so just to recap take a look at your workspace see if there's something you can do to make yourself just 2% more efficient learn the other pieces of a camera and maybe take a yoga class every once in a while thank you [Applause] hello everyone I'm Lola vada or croissant on social networks and I'm an animator admin studios I'm going to talk about a concept that I would like to call visceral animation we have all been students and we have all been fighting against Erik trying to animate cool moments good timing contrasts and crafts beautiful poses we usually start off by copying some references from movies or video games you like and it's okay to do this there is nothing wrong with that and then at some point you feel confident enough to create your own

stuff not only to start experimenting with your animation styles but you also start ensuring the workflow you learn along tango start making layout do the blocking with your golden poses define some breakdowns go to spline refined animation and do the final polishing the problem is that many animators don't ask themselves if that is the right flow for them the rules are necessary when they when you start but also the rules are made to be broken when they limit your creativity I always start an animation in spline I polish some part of the character even before blocking others I don't keyframe the whole rig in the same frame I start animation without knowing what the character is going to do I haven't changed my animation depending on the music and listening to this may sound crazy but it's how I work

I'm sure that there are a bunch of people that fit perfectly with the classic workflow but I would like you to ask yourself if that workflow is the one that allows you to enter and animation France here are some tips that helped me in in process animating the hip of your character forgetting the poses is really helpful I like to think that the character will be like a stain on the screen so I don't really care about pausing at the beginning of my animation process and once which you have the timing and the spacing defined you will be able to work on posing moreover if you imagine it's lame of a character as a ball and the whole body as a stain or even as a fluid it will be easy to define how to deform them to give more or less plasticity using the motion paths could be helpful to constraint the smear frames and body deformations the

form scale move the bones do whatever you need to get the best pose there is no one inside that mess it's not going to cry when you have your animation almost own try to break it with some pretty quick keyframes and you will probably discover pleasant surprises this is specially interesting for overshoots and contact contacts were introducing some noise will help a lot to get more believable actions the last one but the most important for me is try to find a musical bit for your animations we have the musical rhythm internalized so let's use it to animate no matter how bad you are playing an instrument you have listened to music your whole life if you look closely every action has its own hit moments some more obvious than others but being aware of the musicality we want to give or animation will let us avoid for all timing you can use your own voice maybe

record your hand playing a rhythm or even follow us on beat to have a cool time and reference at the end we want to work on animations that thrill people and as far as I'm concerned animation is about enjoying the tempo thank you very much [Applause] hi everyone I'm Sylvia Chong I'm a lead artist at League of geeks working at a small indie studio I also juggle other roles as an animator rigor and character artist my tips today will be about how getting a little technical will expand your toolset and can save you time without compromising on quality it can be quite common for animators to overlook or sorry didn't I want to get comfortable with constraints it can be quite common for animators to overlook

or void use and constraints in their workflow it can seem complicated or cumbersome but they're actually not as tricky as you might think and can be a powerful tool to add to your arsenal constraints can help you easily create overlaps transfer motion from dynamic systems optimize your workflow utilize spline paths in geometry stabilize movement in mocap and more so encourage those who aren't comfortable with constraints to take a closer look and discover how they can make the most of them tip 2 block faster by breaking the rules that's right go ahead and animate the world control generally speaking we never animate the world control there might be some exceptions for locomotion but it simply creates too much havoc the curves of child controls can become difficult to edit and understand but sometimes it just feels more intuitive to move and rotate the entire character when you're blocking particularly for more complicated actions that involve

spinning and flipping so instead of avoiding the world control I use a method where I try to leverage it positioning it where it would be most useful this position can change from post pose but it's best to keep the keys steps when I'm done I'll delete the animation from the control and you use a constraint and bake workflow that lets me retain a lot of key in this clip you can see I've changed the relative position of the world control to help me quickly rotate the character from the hips here I'm blocking out a swing so I've moved the world control to the hand this helps me rotate the entire character from this point letting me quickly block out the gross motion using a single control I can then add more poses and easily adjust the time over the swing as I iterate when I'm done blocking ru CG marks like a need a tool to help me clean up you can do this manually but obviously the script makes it much quicker so basically what the LA cañada does is create locators for every selected control so you should select everything you've keyed in the step then

it constrains and bakes the motion on the locators to record the animation you can then delete the animation from the world control and recenter it then bake the recorded motion back to your rig this is a non-destructive process which leaves your rig and animation intact and your world control centered in clean it sounds a little complicated but I'll show you these steps again visually so there are a couple important notes if you use this method you need to bake the hip controls first to avoid broken results and you should run an oil filter on all curves after baking this is the process in action apologies if this goes a little quick so slip the rig controls the script generates locators for each one the script constrains and bakes the animation to the corresponding locators I select the world control and delete its keys I select the hip controls and the script bakes this grabs the motion that was previously recorded on the locators and transfers it back the

remaining controls are then selected and baked at the same time the final results is a clean scene with the stationary world control and the original animation rig intact so advantages of this workflow are it can speed up blocking letting you iterate on more ideas the world control can be repositioned anywhere you need it giving you a cleaner arcs and control over the center of a spin or flip and it can reduce the amount of eye kfk switching you might have to do tip 3 speed up polishing by simulating secondary motion if you haven't tried out simulating secondary motion you should it might not be for everybody or every style but it can be a real time-saver so it's worth trying out the results may not always be perfect or exactly what you're intended but it lays down a nice base and from there it can be quicker to just think it all by hand and if your core animation needs to change for whatever reason it's easy to resume you can create your own

dynamic setup or use one of many scripts available online some scripts you might want to check out overlap earth physics taller magic string spring so give it a go you might find it saves you a bunch of time since summary there isn't just one of one way of working so keep experimenting and exploring go beyond your comfort zone don't be afraid to get a little technical it only increases your understanding of the greater picture reflect on your process pinpoint your bottlenecks and see if there are better solutions we work in an incredibly demanding industry as I say work smarter not harder and always stay curious thanks for your time hi I'm Zach an indie developer from Toronto today I want to share with you how my skills as an animator benefit from being exposed to multiple disciplines within a studio I'll

illustrate this how it can be beneficial and try to give you a few tips of how you can do the same so I co-founded a company called odd bird where I focus on game design mostly but I also do freelance animation at a company called vertex pop so to best illustrate my point I want to frame this as the area between where my design skills and my animation skills overlap I'm gonna use examples that have helped me but I think this can apply to any discipline really I want to start with how my design knowledge can improve my animation so this is an example from odd Birds currently unannounced project and I want to frame it a little bit differently or explain how I did the game revolves around these little fruit with big personalities and there's 84 of them with two states each meaning I needed to create 168 animations and that just wasn't realistic with the time frame so to tackle the quantity of animation I

actually needed to produce I thought of it as designing animations rather than just going for it and this allowed me to develop a more creative solution instead of rigging each of them I used a few empty game objects to create a setup that let me reuse animations for any character I planned out which fruit would get what animations and ended up with 37 unique ones in the end out of these 37 some of the more specific but most could be applied to any fruit I made a few variations as well to add a little more personality these were also animated directly in unity so if any other team members needed to edit them they didn't have to open any software that they weren't familiar with another example can be found in how animation can be informed by the mechanics of the game this is especially easy to do in characters cinematics or things like highlight intros but collaborating with the designer will make your animations so much more effective in the this will also help give context to the

game mechanics and it's always better to show rather than to tell last year Albert was working on a game called super random heroes and I created this interest cinematic for a mini-boss the enemy does a jumping attack where he tries to land on the player so I put that right in the cinematic just give a lot of context to the mini-boss and created an opportunity for players to feel smart for picking up on it now let's flip it how can animation help my design skills I want to use the principles of animation as an example what perspective can they give to a design well I consider things like how much time am i giving the players to learn something how do I anticipate a design beat in the game can I anticipate player progression how can you use staging to draw attention throughout a level or what order am i presenting things how many things am i requiring the player to mentally keep track of that once this

kind of thing is really useful to me since using it as a lens to see my own work differently allows me to ask myself questions that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of another interesting perspective that animation can give design is visual language games are interacting with the system that's behaving in a specific way and at the end of the day you're communicating an emotion or some kind of information without words designs can use words but generally I think it's more engaging to not I worked on both the level design and animation for vertex pops new game super crush ko and I needed to use my skills through dealt both disciplines to communicate with the team to communicate the visual language of the game I hope this gives you an idea of how you can learn from other perspectives or workflows to improve your own work it can be a lens to critique or a basis for your approach for something entirely new and the best part is you can learn this

from the people already around you this can be co-workers dev friends or people that you just met on the street so the problem is seeing some from another perspective can be unsettling at first so I want to try to leave you with a couple tips how you can do this on your own try asking someone what do they consider before they start work what principles do they follow as they work and my personal favorite what criteria do they use to measure the quality of their own work and as a bonus you might find a more creative solution to a problem you're having thank you oh [Applause] hi I'm Melissa shim and I'm probably a senior animator at Sony Santa Monica I most recently things before that so I'll be covering some tips and tricks about

networking and job hunting and I think they're applicable whether you're new to the industry or you've been doing this for a while first off I'd like to say that networking can be super awkward however if you're just starting out over time it'll get easier while networking can also seem self-serving I don't think it really has to be we're all here to help each other out so just be yourself and be genuine with your interactions my first topic is edit etiquette provide a reason to connect part of networking is to reach out to as many people as possible however I don't necessarily think that quantity is better over the quality when I started networking online specifically I would usually contact an animator at a studio I was interested in and see if they had some time to answer some questions I believe that's striking up a conversation with the other person actually provides a more authentic and

therefore useful connection keep in mind that not everyone will respond to you nor are they obligated to this is totally normal and nothing to take personally be professional this is a pretty obvious one if you're looking for information or for mentorship sharing gratitude with a please and thank you and respecting their time in space will go a long way especially if that person has taken time out of their day to help ya I also would love to advise against using Facebook as a way to connect with someone you've never spoken to or you've never met in person before honestly you don't want someone like me to post a picture of you from ten years ago doing drunk limbo right Simon so if you're looking for a professional connection please use these platforms instead my second main topic is to know yourself in your audience have clear goals of what you want to accomplish and ask yourself

if the move you're making is in the right direction or not when deciding on a piece of work you want to do choose something that really excites you your love for an idea will actually show more than you realize in your final product and therefore make it stand out here's an example of a piece I did back in 2014 I didn't really create this to get a job at any specific studio by I had a great admiration for work for games like this and lo and behold a bit a year a bit later I ended up at Sony and be self aware of your work and what I mean by this is to be honest and realistic about where the quality of your work stands compare your work to the gold Studios you have in mind as well as to other animators at your experience level find areas where you can improve and if asking for feedback point these out also remember to be kind to yourself during this process you can always aim for the stars but be aware of what it will take

to get there do your research be familiar with the studio in the position you're interested in the history of their games their work culture management style and get as much detail as you can on the position you're applying for as much as they're looking to see if you're a right fit for them you want to ensure that they're a right fit for you my final main topic is to always be learning I learned how to do that in one night don't be afraid to ask for feedback whether it's regarding personal animation how you interviewed or how you're performing at work constructive criticism is crucial for growth for example some years ago I had done an animation test which I had not passed the team was actually more than happy to provide me with some great feedback I could use going forward not all studios will be able to do this for you but it's never you know don't be afraid to ask basically finally don't let failure get you down it's often

looked at as a negative thing but there's so much that we can learn from it and you really never know where it'll bring you in 2013 my goal is to break into the visual effects industry by the end of the year and that never actually happened but with each job I took subsequently it ended up bringing me to Sony Santa Monica or I've worked on some of the most exciting and challenging animations of my career so in conclusion being respectful and polite practicing self-awareness and remaining open to growth will go a long way in maintaining a strong career Angela you