The 2016 GDC Animation Microtalks

[Music] but the micro talks uh are really I think it's a really exciting thing that uh earlier later last year uh Mike and Tim emailed me and they said we want to do something fun and exciting and super high energy because even though it's an incredible day it is a long day in a room so we up the stakes a bit with some micro talks and they're short talks but not just short they're very very specifically timed uh we have 10 speakers each speaker got 20 slides and each slide plays at precisely 16 seconds there's no longer it is no shorter the talks have to fit like that we could all [ __ ] it up and it can go horribly wrong and we will you will just have an adventure with us stumbling over our own words um so you guys ready for some fastpac ranting raving crazy not necessarily about making animation but definitely about making animation in video games I won't yell in the mic I

promise um and our theme for uh this year I don't know if we'll do them in the future um if you fill out evaluations and you like it maybe we will but our theme for this year was one of perception so with all that being said uh I'm going to read off my phone because it's the only way I practice this and here we go hi I'm L bashinsky and I am an animator with Blizzard Entertainment ly working on Heroes of the Storm I'm here realistically because I'm new and therefore I don't know very much this is my first big girl job and thus the following are all mistakes I made or somehow stumbled my way into this micro talk will largely be informative for those of you who are still students or in your first year or two in the industry to those of you who may have had to manage a wide-eyed newbie like myself I would hope that this serves as a reminder or if nothing else has you wax a little nostalgic my first year in the industry was a robust lesson in balance it's

exceedingly difficult to sum up the incredible levels of change my life went through in the first year on the job but you can feel free to ask me about more specific anecdotes after the fact my first and most important lesson was probably that no one really cares about you when I began I had the mindset that if I sat down worked as hard as I could muster with a smile on my face my employers would see my hard work and positivity and my career would simply progress onward unimpeded into eternity needless to say it was an incredible error there's a able disconnect between what a manager sees as important and what a new employee thinks is important it's so easy to feel neglected but it's a business not a summer camp turns out there's no gold stars for simply doing your job they're they hire you expecting a high quality delivery the reality is that no one will manage your career better than you you want to progress tell somebody set tangible Milestones with your manager so you have a gauge you can both read to measure how you're improving over time be proactive with your career because no one will love it more than

you learn your tools and then refocus on the craft stop trying to make the best work right out of the gate don't act like you know what's up because chances are you're working with some kind of proprietary something learn your pipeline and tools first ask a ton of questions so you've got at least one foot underneath you going forward if you think you're communicating enough you aren't you should be talking to anyone you're directly or even indirectly working with a staggering amount more than you think you should be there have been too many times I disregarded my own opinion just because I was new I actually still find myself doing this realistically if you see something you should say something just because you're new doesn't mean your opinion isn't worthwhile it is so much better to make a commotion over something that's potentially nothing than to not make a commotion over something that's potentially disastrous as it turns out almost nobody wants Uninvited critique every Point could probably start with this sentence but this isn't University anymore many people aren't looking to get better in any sort of Hardcore critical way establish a safe space for such things

get to know your colleagues but even so I advise proceeding with caution progressing smoothly in the workplace is such an insane Goldie Lock situation communicate but not too much or you obviously need supervision brainstorm but not too much because you obviously can't work independently learn to say no but don't really say no because you're not being a team player your colleagues managers and producers are generally going to be drastically different do what you can to find and install their various language packs so you can turn feedback into items you can understand and ACC upon if you can find the root of someone's desires you can deliver what they're looking for even if it's not explicitly what they're asking for don't make work your only passion despite everything you should be open to critique because work is not about you overinvestigation and crannies leaving

you to feel entirely fulfilled in your life by your job but a probably not and B job security is truly the gateway drug to stagnating creatively rsis are no joke I distinctly remember laughing inwardly at a teacher who tried to tell our class how dangerous working at a computer could be jokes on me I sleep with wrist braces now because otherwise I wake up with no feeling in my poor pathetic curled up little paws take care of your body work gets hard if life gets hard Beyond finding creative curricular activities you should have an extracurricular life you know I'm still schoolb brained because I still think of anything outside my routine obligation is extracurricular but what I mean is it's important to have a life away from the office establish a work life balance early make sure you have personal Outlets who aren't your colleagues so if something in your life does become difficult you have a safe space to leave that emotional baggage namely at home please everyone I beg you to stop looking for your spouse in the workplace you're there for a reason you were hired because someone believes that

you're capable no one is doing you a favor through the act of employing you surprise surprise no one really cares about your self-esteem you join a team because they see something that you can do that will make the project better and so believe you can make it better don't sell yourself short it is just as important as not being an egotistical [ __ ] don't talk yourself or your work down do the best you're able to do and be proud of what you accomplish remember not everyone gets to make games for a living finally make sure that you stay connected be nice make friends and then make friends you can direct every single one of your embarrassing questions to like me hopefully before anything manages to happen you can find me pretty much anywhere on the internet at laani or email me at lishinsky blizzard.com thank you for your [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] time so I've got to follow

that uh here we are all right so uh you guys have seen me a bunch now today right uh I'm Mike Jung Bluth I'm lead animator at volition and I'm one of the co-organizers of the boot camp here so let's go I stand upon this soap box to give my perception of some animators outdated perception of game animation which is my long-winded way of saying some animators have got their heads up their asses now what allows me to make such a sensational accusation well beyond the uh animator cred that I hope this picture provides uh after interviewing some animators this year at volition and reviewing some recurring feedback we get about the boot camp I've had the chance to step back and look at the game animation landscape and a few alarming Tendencies keep popping up first some believe animation should be purely about asset creation and the implementation isn't real animation work second they want to focus on facial animation as a primary

responsibility and third they're influenced primarily by movies games and comics and this makes me sad because you see these are people that aren't cementing their Futures but cementing their feet to the bottom of an increasingly growing pool of animators even worse it's limiting the performances of the characters they are creating the design they could be communicating and stagnating what the medium is even capable of now I'm not here to undervalue the need to focus on traditional skills but the slave like to Devotion to the craft is becoming a crutch not a valuable source of inspiration the process and reasons behind the 12 principles is being ignored while bowing at the altar of the nine old men now before you Lynch me with your Pixar pointed pitchforks let me explain why this is so damaging see believing it's about asset creation is like trying to tell a joke by crafting only the words then having someone with a different sense of humor or timing tell the punchline implementation not the individual assets is where a fully realized character comes to life a

performance is about how all of a character's thoughts and actions come together not the individual emotions or even individual words when was the last time you watched Empire Strikes Back and said damn I just love the way Darth Vader said the word father but I can hear some of you thinking well if he didn't have a mask on and you could see the emotion on his face when he said the word father you might have cared about the word or specific expression this is why facial animation be should be such a big Focus maybe except most cameras look like this this or this right focusing on facial makes for some nice showcase moments but it's a secondary form of communication in most games with little chance of subtle range thanks not only to these cameras but to the subjects we tackle with most games being focused on power fantasies the primary expressions and emotions you're going to see are anger disgust and contempt certainly not something we need a team of animators focused on which leads to the big problem that the root of these issues has I see it when asked what inspires

the common answer is movies games comics when what you spend most of your time doing thinking and talking about are finished forms of popular media it'll primarily shape your work Brad Bird said animation is about creating the illusion of life and you can't create it if you don't have one I'd go a step further you can't create interesting life if you have the same one as everyone else because if your life is consumed by all of the same experiences delivered by mainstream pop culture how can you truly create performances that aren't just incestual regurgitations the most influential and successful characters came from outside of the media Loop Pokemon from an interest in collecting bugs Star Wars from the heroes Journey Nate Mar on Elm Street from a newspaper article about Asian death syndrome what's sad is we all know this but we still live happily within the echo chamber and what's just as sad as betrayed by my slides and references is I'm just as guilty of having these same Tendencies I'm always catching myself being a big old dummy about what makes me a real animator but it's my hope hope and intention that we

can actually change the perception of what it means to be a game animator we're more than a singular fluid animation we're more than a silly expression and we're more than the toys on our shelves we are the communicators of the game's characters and mechanics and we give voice to the personality of the player we're capable of communicating characters and experiences that haven't been seen a million times before and it's our responsibility to do so with an authenticity and honesty that made all of the classic characters feel so real because that's how you create a lasting Legacy and that's how you inspire the next generation of creatives and while I know for many of us games comics and film were a form of escapism that defined our personality and allowed us to embrace the role of a social Outsider it should simply be our Doorway to finding ourselves not the place we hang our hat for the rest of our lives so what's my Approach how about instead of another Stitch pop vinyl maybe a jade plant instead of this year's big comic event look at the p surprise for General non-fiction and instead of seeing that

big Blockbuster five times in theaters find your closest state or national park and allow yourself to be a mer in the world around you because you never know what might become a new passion or inspiration for both yourself and the next generation of creatives here a few of the different things that have delightfully surprised me in their inspiration but I'd love to hear what motivates and inspires all of you so look me up drop me a line at any of these places and let's go about sharing and inspiring one another with all sorts of new experiences and references and I can't wait to see what characters performances and experiences you'll all create next thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

[Music] all right hey everyone my name is g trth a vast majority of my time in the industry has been spent working on the design and development of character gameplay features on games like FIFA Far Cry 3 and just CA 3 currently I'm the gameplay engineering lead at Sony Santa Monica now crafting game characters that move and feel well realized is a complex set of ingredients coming together and hitting the right balance of emotion intent responsiveness and Fidelity is a tricky problem but when your characters finally come to life with their gam play it feels amazing so what's the magic formula right how do we go from good to Great gameplay and an often overlooked ingredient here is the relationship that

exists between the animator and the programmer or designer and I'll use the last two interchangeably so here are a few small things we can do to build stronger Partnerships first remove the middleman I'm hoping this is a thing of the past but I still hear of teams that work in their own departments providing each other lists of requirements with work being passed down from Team to team vetted by layers of management and this drives me insane gameplay realization is all about rapid iteration we know that this nothing slows down iteration more than having to work separately on a feature in a silo hoping that the work you do will magically work for the next person down the chain if you take one thing from this talk it's this next try and sit together there's the reason longdistance relationships are really hard and often fail I wish I could go back in time and make up for all those wasted college Years but I promise you when it comes to the type of work we do proximity really matters I've seen jumps in quality simply because programmers and animators

working on a feature were rearranged to sit together if you think about it it makes a lot of sense if you need to work closely communicate often and iterate you're going to do a better job if that person is sitting close to you proximity inherently means trust next establish a vocabulary people are all different particularly in the case of programmers and animators I'm sure you know we can argue semantics to death you will save a lot of time and energy if you simply agree on a vocabulary and then stick to it it this can and should apply to everything from game features to technology and even animation sets and naming it's important to know what everyone means when they say warping or interactables or reactions and what components of that um you know of the game fall under those buckets which leads us to finding ways to communicate communication isn't just about sending emails and doing standups those things help but it's also all the additional things to get the information across the first thing to start doing is communicating via app actions when you

get up act out and show someone what you mean things become so much more clear even if that makes you look a little silly and in cases where you can't act something out communicate using reference this really helps when you're trying to understand the subjectives like when something isn't smooth enough or needs to feel Snappy I guarantee you if you did a bit of homework you'd find some form of reference or better yet another game that you can use to get your point across using reference really clarifies the Deltas of what we want more of or less of and those are hard things to communicate there's so much more reference available now so please use it next care about each other's craft we're not primarily here to talk about animated movies or TV right sorry JD but we've chosen to be part of game development games are highly technical in nature not caring about implementation is like finally building that Ferrari for someone else to drive having a genuine interest about the how will make you a better game animator and for the programmers it's our job to educate our counterparts on how the

tools and systems work and what that means for Content take time to understand what good looks like for the animator do this for however long it takes and as often as necessary understand that this kind of development is a symbiotic relationship now I know making games is like a never-ending race against the clock much like this presentation but we spend a lot of time doing things that are just [ __ ] meetings that we choose to go to so we feel important even though we don't need to be there or hours of philosophical discussions about how to do something instead of just doing it do this instead spend time getting to know each other and each other's craft once you've got something working play it together in the build what's nice about this is you'll share your successes together when things work out but when they don't you'll get to see the problems and talk about them in the context of the game you'll identify which areas truly matter and use it as a tool to generate meaningful work don't get caught up on titles look titles matter it's true but but don't don't let that get in the way of making the best

game possible don't bias or pass over valuable feedback because the person talking to you isn't an animator or a programmer focus on a person's ability and then use your best judgment to do what uh to decide what to do finally a sure way of developing trust is simply doing your job even though you might not get a goal star but when you get things done people begin to pay attention and when you do your job well people will begin to trust you thank you [Applause] [Music] this is when everything is going to go wrong just to manage expectations all right okay does it automatically show up

do I have to hit something else huh F5 see guys this is going to be great all right I wonder if this place hello everybody my name is Billy Harper I'm animation lead at Sucker Punch and Now for Something Completely Different how many times have important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed but where humor was taboo because the subject being discussed was so serious it's not automatically advancing so that's great okay no why is so serious what John C says here is is unfortunately true but I think that we if we take ourselves less serious at the workplace we can actually cultivate creativity creativity it's not not advancing

automatically all right I'm just going to okay so this is my this is my Cube at work there's a quote down there that is the inspiration for this Talk itself it's too long to read and it's not going to I can't say the the entire thing but basically it means we have to have fun at work the moment that you don't give a [ __ ] is when all of a sudden you have nothing to lose and once you have nothing to lose it's it's going to be even more creative I found this to be true and that one's not playing awesome the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood a way of operating which allowed their natural creativity to function an ability to play play we keep on talking about this create a safe place it's it's okay to play get into the open mode where you

are more receptive it's okay to fail this is a message that's repeated over and over even in this documentary six days to air about the production of a of one South Park episode writer's room is is off limits I I will only bother the writer's room if there's something that has got to be dealt with or answered right on the [Music] spot we never had cameras the rider yeah I mean it's a really it's kind of a safe place again safe place it's okay to be vulnerable it's okay to fail like now I don't take any offense you didn't like my idea and you got to feel like it is kind of it's weirdly vulnerable I've had friends that worked at other shows and if you say something that doesn't work they're like it sucks you suck you're not funny and these guys it's actually a very kind room and I think like the worst you get is okay she said okay all right for me a big part of this

is uh I don't take any offense you didn't like my idea and you got to there we go it's about perspective and my perspective comes where I'm from I'm from Southern West Virginia go ears uh a c toown um where it's physically tough it's long hours it's dangerous there's actually a term called the Huda which is the shift where you work all night underground it it's thankless there's no Legacy you never had a child that come up to somebody with a lump of coal and say thank you for changing my life um it's also dangerous um when I was when I was in was when I was in grade school um I had three different friends that lost their fathers in the coalmines we don't make decisions that are life and death however we actually make decisions that allow other people to escape whatever may be depressing for them them that's that's huge that's

that's something that's aspirational but how can we expect other people to escape if we don't have the facility to be able to escape ourselves to be able to come out of the the the the daytoday and just have fun here's some of the methods one of my favorite this is why I'm starting with it get together go to a bar get drunk there's no hierarchy there and you talk about stuff and then awesome games happen guys there's no way alcohol didn't have anything to do with this J um another thing at Sucker Punch we have uh we have hip chat we have chat rooms that are dedicated just for people to go and have fun we have one called The Mark Wahlberg experiment experience where we post pics of Marky Mark and then we actually have a theory about whether him and Matt Damon are the same person um we also have the ideal wall this is an open wall in the hallway that you can just walk by and you can take a card and little magnet and put it up and you have an idea and other people can go by and they can put a little thumbs up beside

it and they can like it and it's okay it's it's okay if the idea isn't accepted and it's a lot more open um now here though is why I'm wearing my my suit that everybody sees my my favorite method to do this at work and to get into a state of play is on the map volume is it playing it's not playing it's an area we have at Sucker Punch that we don't have to worry about how much time we're spending there because it's it's it's free um and we get to play with others as principal McGee says it's better to play with a group than with yourself so let's go back to the uh the original quote that was too small for you guys to see uh from Bruce Lee art reaches its greatest Peak when devoid of self-consciousness Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he's making or about to make

that is truly the art of not giving a [ __ ] um let's see so so basically what you want to do is you want to help others create a safe safe spot at work play with others at work don't play with yourself at work HR smile they they frown on that guys it's happened twice now um so have fun get get drunk with people meet up with your friends and just get inspired and come away and help other people get [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] inspired oh

man I just want to leave that up there that's oh now he [Music] sad oh yeah feel like this didn't need to be as complicated as we made it can everybody no one can you see that what drag it [Laughter] over I I couldn't figure out PowerPoint oh [ __ ] now skipping ahead oh my God this is really hard it's probably not hard I'm just not bright okay

is it going to hi my name is Gwen my name is Gwen Frey and I'm a technical animator I've been in the industry for eight years now uh about two years ago I went Indie and I just shipped my very first Indie title The Flame and the flood buto but my talk is not about that my talk is not about animation it's about animators I want to ask a very important question why are animators so damn weird because being an animator is not a job like working in a bank or something like that being an animator comes with identity it's like how when you see a used car salesman and someone tells you they're a used car salesman you go oh I'm never going to trust you when someone says they're an animator you know they're going to be weird and I was trying to figure out why like maybe only weird people want to become animators like maybe this is a field that attracts weird weird people but that's not the case people start normal and then they

start animating and then they lose their minds and I have some theories as to why my first theory is this I believe that watching the same thing on Loop all day is literally torture and I'm going to give you an example now of what it is like scub be better than this what could be better than this hey what could be better than this what can be better than look can be better than look can be better than look be better than that was 16 seconds what could be better than [Music] this this this hey what can be better than this hey what can be better than this that was 30 seconds total if you work an 8 hour day you would see the equivalent of that clip

28,800 times you'll dream about that at night that'll stay with you but it's not just actually watching the animations when you animate you make the face of the characters your animating like you get into character you have to you can't help it so you'll be sitting at your desk making random ass faces as you work and this can be good like if you're working on something that's cute and adorable or if you're working on a character that's happy you'll be smiling all day you'll be smiling all day and you'll be like almost a little bit stupid because you're just cheerful for no reason and you're skipping because that's what happens when you smile all day but most games aren't like that most games are dark so you'll find yourself making angry faces or sad faces or whatever your character is going through and then you'll go home and you'll pick a fight with your boyfriend for like no reason and that's not okay but it's even worse than that because before you animate you've heard everyone talking

about it you actually act out these scenes so you get to act out dying slowly you get to act out crawling to your inevitable demise you get to act out whatever the [ __ ] this is and like and you're probably not very fit cuz you sit at a desk all day so you're not going to look cool while you do it you're going to look ridiculous this is especially true when you work on an animal because I guarantee you when you're working on that dog you're going to be like looking around like a dog would or you might get down on all fours and act out the scene as if you were the dog in order to Pace it and your co-workers will judge you for this this is not normal behavior imagine that you're at a bar hanging out with like having beers after tab bond with your co-workers and they've seen you acting like a dog and you're unhinged

because you've been watching the same thing on lud b day what are you going to say to them you you're a subject matter expert in the most random [ __ ] imaginable like I can't tell you what's going on in the world but I know this [ __ ] about bats I made that slide from memory this one too and that's even worse because once you study the human body you lose the ability to do things unconsciously I can't blink anymore I just close and open my eyes at intervals so that they don't dry out so if you want to know why animators are weird this is why we've been watching the same thing on Loop all day listening to the same audio over and over and over again we have random injuries because we've probably sprained something I sprained my ankle standing up from a desk too fast one time uh we only we're subject that matter experts in the most random things depending on whatever it is you're

working on and we're hyper aware of our own Motions like I don't know where to put my hands right now that's my talk I do on I have 10 more seconds I am giving a talk Wednesday like a real talk Wednesday at 11: come check it out [Music] I feel like I'm going to be real [ __ ] Downer after that so I apologize in advance okay try this again thank you all right all right computers I'm here to talk about using computers just kidding hi my name's Ryan I make animation for video games I believe in tough love and I'm going to say things fast and harsh but know that I mean it all playfully despite right the title this is not a talk about bullshitting a company into hiring you even though you

suck but I know about that too this is a talk about bullshitting your audience into believing you know what the hell you were doing like I'm doing right now most recently I've been animating guns on the battlefield games some people thinks think this means I'm a republican but I just like mechanical stuff it's satisfying for me to animate something that has a right way and it appeals to my inner contrarian to do something that at a glance looks wrong but the experts recognize is correct so last year when this microt talk idea started to collate I wanted to rant about everything that devs get wrong about guns guns have been around for centuries and don't work in mysterious ways but we still see them used wrong all the time then I realized with the help of my boot camp colleagues for many reasons what a totally [ __ ] stupid idea that is because judgments about politics and the violent tone of AAA video games aside the problem I wanted to rant about is a lot simpler than that when we animate a real world thing but it works like [ __ ] it's for one of two reasons one designers for reasons that can be for good or evil have evoked the sacred words for gameplay or two the animator responsible is willfully ignorant to the relevant facts one of

these things is a much is a reality of game development and the other is a much bigger problem in animation than people holding guns in a stupid way who are you going to shoot there will so instead of guns I'm going to talk about reference this is not a rant about bad cliches like one-handed shotgun pumps three-point Landings or excessive downshifting but those really chaff my ass too those are stylistic choices by the kind made by the kind of people who still think the Wilhelm scream is a funny Easter egg no I'm here to rant about truth facts and reference from how mechanical objects work to broader areas like basic physics we all know we can go out and learn something when faced with a new animation challenge but too often we don't we know we're supposed to collect reference but when was the last time you did Beyond maybe getting up and videotaping yourself something you're not actually very good at I say ignorance because it's fine to bend reality when we can explain our decision but you've got to know the rules to break the rules and because it's cool isn't always enough and let's be honest game developers might not always be the best Arbiters of what is cool to the mainstream I mean probably half of us are wearing a t-shirt that we got for free we all want our performance

to be cool we want people to say how great it is because we wouldn't have gotten into the Arts if we didn't need the constant validation of our peers but it's not just smooth curves and strong poses it's the illusion of life and too often we forget that some viewers are more familiar with our subject matter than we are this is why we collect reference did you know that in 1936 Disney had a zoo on the lot of course you do you read Disney's animation Bible just like the rest of us you can name all nine old men and all 12 principles but when was the last time you really dug into your subject matter before you started setting Keys talking fast because of that Zoo 80 years later Bambi is still a pretty damn good representation of a deer the anatomy the personality the movement the rest of the animation industry was barely past rubber ho arms when they made this Beautiful Bastard not because of talent but because of reference you have to know what you don't know because when animating some sports [ __ ] a fight or whatever count on the fact that someone in the audience and maybe a lot of someone's know the subject matter better than you so when your taekwon do dude does a cool move exclusive to karate that you found on YouTube and your fiction hasn't explained why you've just potentially pulled someone out of a

magical moment for some small but not insignificant insignificant portion of your audience your lack of diligent research has broken the illusion you were hired to create no you're not ruining the game but that moment of disappointment that someone just felt you did that shame on you let's do a quick case study archery is not an obscure sport nearly 20 million Americans participated in archery events in 2012 nearly 10% of this country can shoot a bow to some degree but when katas Merida and Hawkeye hit the big screens we saw the proficiency Spectrum range from Mastery to complete [ __ ] the director of Brave has been an Archer since age 12 Jennifer Lawrence trained with an Olympic Archer for The Hunger Games Jeremy rener trained with somebody else uh and I'm pretty sure the Avengers had the biggest budget of any of them so how does this happen simple it happens by not doing your [ __ ] homework animating something wrong won't ruin the game but it's not harmless either you break the illusion not only for the nitpickers but for the passion people like you who can't not notice the way you can't not notice when a limb

pops or a foot slides when you don't do your homework you tell the audience I underestimate you never forget that the level to which you and your team care is not the limit to how much your audience is allowed to it's easy when you're sitting at your desk to forget just how far your reaches empathize with your audience care about how much they care sometimes animators think reference just means recording themselves but if you don't what you're doing is that quality reference acting isn't the skill of turning on a camera from the front find or shoot reference that is actually useful if you don't know learn a picture is worth a thousand words so what's a feeling worth obviously you don't need to fight in the UFC before animating combat but you might be amazed at how much you can learn about punching in a couple of hours of boxing class and you don't need to be Eddie Van Halen before animating for Rock Band but I promise the musicians and the audience are looking at your cord shapes and of course I know it's some of you are thinking yes of course there will always be cases where you have a perfectly valid creative reason to

deviate from the source and sometimes the real thing does look stupid as hell I am not saying you should be a stickler for realism and everything you animate I'm only saying your animation will always be better for having gathered good reference than if you hadn't thank you be [Applause] [Music] [Applause] awesome okay awesome hi everybody I'm Danielle randoo I'm the reviews editor at Zam I used to be at polygon that might be where you might know me from and I am here to talk about not being an animator at all whatsoever

I'm a boxer I'm an EMT I'm a game critic and this is about as advanced as my animation gets this nice uh two-frame walk cycle here I do uh I do a little bit of hobbyist stuff sort of for fun on this level uh but I can tell you and what I'm here to talk about today is uh sort of what animations mean something to players to somebody who does not know what they're talking about when it comes to animation uh that's me here we are I can tell you what really struck me and I want to sort of uh let you know that these things are incredibly important to players so I know you probably fight for them keep fighting for them so the first one is dropsy hugs dropsy is a game from last year is my favorite game from last year and it's about an evil looking clown who uh likes to give people hugs and solve their problems which is pretty cool and really nice and really special uh and the game is a point-and-click adventure game a traditional Adventure game but it really sort of shows the sweetness and the the wonderfully you know nice and and happy warm feelings uh

and it goes a long way this animation goes a long way in sort of showing the worldview of the developer and of that particular game and it's a good example of pixel art which in my opinion allows you to make these really big statements with just these tiny little elements a few lines bunch of color and it just shows so much more it evokes more than it actually shows something more realistic next one is Lara croft's ponytail squeeze every time she gets out of the water and Rise of the Tomb Raider she actually rings out her hair which is a thing that almost every woman I know who has long hair does if she works out or swims or any of these cool things and this was something who we have volume this was something that I noticed every time she got out of the water and you know lar Croft is this super heroic woman she fights Bears she fights fighting men she takes on Special Forces but she still takes a minute to you know get that water out of her hair every time uh you know she's got to be at her best she's got to be focused she's got to be in it um more than anything any dialogue or any gesture in the game this really endeared me to Lara this made me

feel like hey she's human too even though she fights Bears uh and is good at archery and other cool things that I will never be good at uh the next one here is uh Henry's little stair tap every time he in firewatch every time he walks out of his Tower he sort of touches the top of the stairs uh he's the protagonist in firewatch he's a middle-aged dude who's sort of escaping his normal world and this is sort of a foreign world for him this is a rustic uh different kind of place for him to be in uh that moment just says so much about him he's a tall guy he's a dude who likes to make you know little connections and he's literally feeling out his space in this uh it's the sort of thing I've known taller folks to do I'm tiny and short so I don't do it but it's something I've known a lot of people to do and it kind of adds a little bit of his character right there even though it's such a tiny little touch it made me feel a little closer to Henry think this uh presentation might have

stuck in which case yep it went to sleep I'm going to hit space bark again and okay oh oh do we oh my goodness you want to go back now I want to go back it's okay everybody everything's great no need to panic maybe start panicking I'll just go from here we might have missed a moment here we go okay so I was just going to talk very briefly about the fact that you see Henry's hands all the time outside of that you know sort of tapping animation uh you also see his

hands literally uh everything you do you know it's a first person game so it's basically seeing hands and every action and you see his wedding ring on his left hand every time you see his uh his hands I'm just going to go forward because I think this slide made this computer very angry okay uh the next animation is the only nonhuman non-ch character animation in this entire presentation and it's from the witness a game that made me very angry uh a puzzle game that's about an island that doesn't move or really change with your interactions very much but when you do finish an area in this game you get this slow deliberate little little animation this this wonderful you know almost like a Victory lap like enjoy it something happened you know something happened on this island and it's slow it's subtle it's really really God you know just like oh man this laser meant everything to me I did a dance every time I finished an area I literally did like a

whole I can't dance so I won't try it but I did a whole thing and it you know reinforces these heady philosophical ideas in the witness about you know being rational and so on and so forth but it made just made me dance last one is Khloe's face after that kiss in life is strange So This Kiss and Khloe's reaction to it uh is just one of the moments that best exemplifies life is strange as a whole you was a game about being an awkward teenager you know still figuring things out still working out their identity all that sort of stuff uh and Chloe in this case the girl with the blue hair is this prototypical bad girl she dares Max to kiss her and if Max makes that bold move it just surprises the hell out of Chloe uh showing again this is an awkward teen uh she's just sort of figuring things out she's not really such a bad girl she's just like whoa oh my God and it's just this incredible incredible moment in a game that is really about sort of very raw feelings you know some of the dialogue in life is strange turned people off uh but I think the pure emotional content

framing I just overall yeah of that moment uh is something really special so that's pretty much my talk and I wanted to tell you all that we notice these things as players you know somebody who doesn't know a damn thing about key Framing and making things work um I notice these things so keep fighting the good fight keep making sure those really special moments get in the games and thank you very [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] much

all right I have a video like Gwen no what do I make it control up hold on how do you make it full screen all right one second hello again hopefully this works uh Hey everybody I'm Simon uh so right now you're wondering two things uh first what's this confusing feeling I'm having right now um and second holy [ __ ] E3 is right around the corner uh what are these nine things I need to stop doing right now to

get Beach bod ready um well I'm glad you asked uh these are things we've all done in our career at one point or another uh and I'm sharing them today so hopefully we can learn from them and never do them again um so number one as we wait for it stop using handheld cameras when the shot doesn't call for it POV cameras are almost always the wrong decision uh when you use a camera in this way you're implying that the viewer is an active participant in the scene uh if they aren't the result just feels creepy uh and completely undermines the purpose of the shot ask yourself what the intent of the scene is and choose the camera and composition to support it sometimes this calls for POV but more often than not it doesn't stop being a creeper and come on come on everybody we're better than that number two stop thinking that just because you're using map means that you get to throw at all the [ __ ] you learned in school and if they taught you to use Raw map cap go back and get a refund cuzz humans don't always move in the most appealing way timing staging

Silhouettes arcs these all need your attention regardless of the source at the end of the day you as the animator are responsible for what ends up on screen as much as Golem might disagree even the best performances by the best actors need some digital makeup because at the end of the day we're better than that oh no I lost my not uh number four stop using out of context oh oops I skipped one uh stop animating anything before planning it first there's no way in hell you know from memory how everything moves not even uh the time you spend planning a shot will almost always be less than the time you spend doing revisions if you hadn't shoot shoot reference nervous acting in front of your co-workers get over it they hired an animator they expect you to be eccentric don't let them down because everybody we're better than that number four stop using aut of context Idols did your hero forget to go to the potty before he left the house if not why is he doing the pee pee dance

and also why the [ __ ] are game characters so out of breath all the time try to do something more subtle more contextual maybe react to their surroundings maybe they're scared or injured try using a hierarchy of needs if you need to find out what their immediate want is conveying these things in your characters will make them much more believable and engaging but no more pee PE dances especially if you don't shoot reference first we're better than that number five stop acting like your job ends when you hit export if you want to just be handed shots all day and sit at your desk with your headphones on I suggest sluming it in TV or film your responsibility for a character's movement doesn't end until the game is in a player's hands this means getting your hands dirty in the engine working with designers during every stage of development and championing that quality of movement keep pushing that quality until they have to PRI your hands from per force submit button cuz because almost made it uh number six stop waiting to finish an animation before testing it in game I've

got a spoiler alert your animation is going to suck the first time you put it in the game want someone to tell you that after 1 hour or 10 the shorter the intervals between iterations the higher the quality of your work establish timing staging Silhouettes first non-an animators might have trouble seeing blocking at first but be patient help them to understand what they're looking at and how to provide the right kind of feedback and don't whine when folks give you major changes because number seven stop only worrying about fodder for your demo reel you were hired to collaborate on a product not work on your portfolio when you're asked to make an animation you think is beneath you check your ego at the door make that stand to run transition the best [ __ ] stand to run transition the world has ever seen making video games is a team sport not a guitar solo if you're focused only on your real you're going to find yourself needing to use that reel sooner than you think don't be like that because we'll get

there number eight stop resisting feedback the best animators on the planet know that there's room for improvement what makes you so [ __ ] special you may say you like feedback I know you you don't if someone takes the time to offer an opinion on your work embrace it everyone wants the same thing to make the best damn game possible your job isn't to tell them they're wrong it's to find out why they feel that way it might not be what you want to hear in fact I hope it isn't you don't get to be better by having your belly rubbed all day number nine stop undervaluing yourself on so many Dev teams animators still aren't given much of a voice but when you act like you don't have a voice you're not going to be looked you're going to be looked at as a service provider you bring value to the team your perspective as a Storyteller actor designer are all assets for the game team and for [ __ ] sake stop working for free because we're not cheap hookers we're high price escorts damn it and

remember [Applause] [Applause] thanks I don't know how to make it go away I'm not better than that I am going to be um representing Steve Jobs Here at this talk with my fancy MacBook don't be jealous let see come on Steve down all right who's water do you think this is you think it's gross if I drink it I'm going to try this

one oh yeah that one had a slime to it all right my name is Mark pulleyblank and I'm an animator and a visual effects artist and I'm embarrassed to say that I've mostly worked in film sorry at such slum holes like wed digital and Sony animation I'm also the CEO of the interactive the animation director at CGS spectrum.com a lecturer at California State University a musician a composer a father of four a mediocre husband but a really Kick-Ass brager all right with that said one of the more frequent questions I get asked is how do you stay motivated it's a great question and the answer is I don't not always but I do have strategies because it sucks to suck we all like to do things we're good at for example cuz I haven't made many slides I'm I'm not good at making slides I don't like making slides but I do like

this talking in front of people and feeling important so I know I need to sort it out and the most important and most difficult part of the process is to just simply get started bam here we go a pretty blue gradient blue is good work for Facebook a playful new font that's not comic Sands I think it's Brady Bunch it doesn't have to be amazing it's not going to be amazing but at this stage of the game I'm just trying to focus on the process not the result we live in a results based world and this idea that one what we're about to create has to be amazing before we even get started is one of the biggest obstacles to our creativity the way we get better is doing and it's extremely difficult to keep doing when our fulfillment is married to our results recently I asked a class of University students that if they could take a magical pill that would instantly make them great at what they do would they take it and of course they all said yeah every one of them and I get it being a student is scary loads of pressure but this thinking is backwards process on the other hand is

the doing the act of creating as kids we have this figured out my six-year-old daughter cuts paper she leaves it scattered all over my house she has endless motivation for the process and doesn't care one bit about the result until until I ask her to clean up and then suddenly I'm an [ __ ] someone once said that the secret to success is doing the stuff that nobody wants to do in an animation luckily that's pretty much all of it right so you're not always going to love it and that's okay just relax and remember that when somebody challenges your ideas it's an invitation to grow not to fight which brings me to this handy but difficult tip own up to your fear this stuff is personal and having our ideas rejected over and over again is not only frustrating but it breeds insecurity which is creative Kryptonite so in navigating these Waters I like to ask myself this simple question do I have the best interest of the project at heart this is completely liberating and frees me up emotionally to collaborate the more that people trust your motives the more likely they'll be to seek out your opinion I'm going to talk about Brad Bird again he once said make it

okay for people to challenge your ideas the good ones can withstand it and the bad ones Fall Away to reveal something better and to me that's one of the purest explanations of creative collaboration I've ever heard now I'm going to sound like an old man but my next tip is about distractions cuz this [ __ ] makes me crazy we live in a time of unprecedented distraction we are literally two clicks away from millions of bits of entertainment and if you really believe that you do your best work while streaming internet content then imagine you're an astronaut strapped to a rocket on a Launchpad waiting to be launched in the outer space and this is Mission Control right now I know we're not astronauts but the truth is if you're really engaged and passionate about what you're doing you can't be distracted and one of the best ways that I know to remain engaged is to always quit when I'm ahead walking away from your work when you're frustrated lessens the chance that you're ever going to going to come back to it and increases your vulnerability for distractions instead

solve whatever it is that's troubling you and shut it down that way you'll be encouraged to get back to it that's a big one in the meantime we said it already tonight live your life do something else anything else guilt-free much of what I know about drawing was learned while taking breaks from playing music and today I'm a far better musician due to the breaks that I take from animation the process is all pretty much the same upstairs it's like this problem solving activity that connects I don't know I'm not a doctor I just know that when I'm drawing or sculpting or writing or any this kind of stuff it all feels the same upstairs it's sort of this organic brain food um next this is a big one I think we touched on it already raise your heart rate for 15 minutes or so per day and I can almost guarantee that after you finish vomiting and the burning sensation it fades from your muscles your Creative Juice is actually flow the heaps and heaps of medication created by science to battle anxiety and depression pales in comparison sometimes to Common

exercise that's not to say we don't need medication again I'm not a doctor some of us do but exercise is sort of a quick and easy fix lastly a me a lesson from my brother a ballbearing Salesman in a small farming town in northern Canada that was their uh anyway best ballbearing salesman in the world no joke he loved his job and he once asked me how I like mine and I told him I didn't and I'll never forget what he said he told me it's not the responsibility of your job to show you a good time you idiot it's actually the opposite dummy and to this day uh when I get to work I put my hand on the door and I make a conscious decision to either do good work or go home and honestly some days I go home and that's okay but if I go in I go in hard for the work for the job and for me and those are just a few ways that I stay motivated thank

[Music] [Applause] [Music] you keeping the water man the slimy one just a moment here just a moment yeah uh the screen's black uh thanks Steve Revenge from the grave I just went to sleep ah it's coming it'sing

okay I love going to work on that Pati there we go sweet all right and are let's just make sure we is yours already open um I don't think so it's uh that one there Jak yeah I want to close off yeah yeah Jake

there we go all right uh so my name is Jake I'm a concept artist designer and animator on cuphead which is coming out someday it's going to happen 2016 all right uh so this talk is aimed at those of you that aren't fully satisfied with your jobs whether you'd rather be in a different position in the game industry or doing something else entirely if you're totally happy with what you've got going on just uh space out for a bit or take a nap or you know just fill the time so we all get into this industry because we love games and animation and we want to help make them for a living but upon entry many of us become a small part of a large pipeline often with brutal hours tight quotas and not much creative influence let alone any choice and what you work on each day this is a fine position to start in and depending on you in the studio it might even be a good place to stay every person job is different and at the end of the day

we're all making games but ultimately for me I want a job where I have heavy creative input and freedom I'm extremely lucky to have that with cuphead this is an amazing industry and those of us working in it now should be very grateful work hard and appreciate your job but don't settle in and get too comfortable if it's not what you'd like to be doing 5 years from now if you're going to spend 40% of your days doing something it might as well be something you love so what would you love to do for a living I'm sure many of you know and some of you don't some of you are afraid to pursue it and some of you are working your asses off to get it some of you are hoping you just somehow end up there and some of you think what you want isn't even possible which is [ __ ] you really can do anything as long as it doesn't break the laws of physics anybody that may have told you otherwise is full of [ __ ] how could anyone possibly know your potential if somebody else can do it why not you you can do anything that others can enjoy enjoy for a living you just have to do something about

it you can't expect where you are now to magically lead to the place you want to be even if all you want is a higher position at your studio there's no guarantee you'll ever be promoted if you only do the requirements of your job unless the head of the company you work for is your grandma don't put your future in anyone else's hands because nobody else is plotting to get you what you want the only way to get what you want is to work for it or get very lucky but you cannot count on that it's up to you and nobody else this is a trigger warning so if you know what you want and you have the time you only have two options one try to get where you want to be or two die having never really tried to get there you only have one life you either try or you don't and tomorrow is not guaranteed sorry about that uh let's talk about flowers um imagine somebody that makes flower hats do you think they could make a living 10 years ago maybe but probably not back then you were limited by your location is there a gallery nearby willing to sell them are

there enough people around that want them well now the world's completely opened up over 3 billion people have the internet and each one of them is a potential customer or supporter if you can get your work in front of them I submit that in today's world if you work hard enough making flower hats you could make a living if you can make a living with flower hats you can make a living with anything so don't rule anything out you have something unique to give to the world you've all had complete different experiences you've been influenced by different people and you've worked through different hardships because of that nobody can make what you can you just have to get good at it and it's never been easier to get your work out there either if you both consistently post quality work and reach out and connect with others you will slowly but surely at the very worst build up an audience and network of people that want only what you have to offer there's never been a better time to be an artist so if you know what you want if you're not working toward it why not something that many of us struggle with is a lack of motivation I believe there is internal and external motivation

external motivation comes from things like seeing others work hard and Achieve experiencing others great works getting positive feedback on what you're doing going to talks external motivation is enough to push you to action but it won't keep you going it waivers some days you're so motivated and and inspired you'll burst if you don't pour it into something and some days you've got nothing you can't rely on it it's like somebody giving you jumper cables what you need is internal motivation it's a battery that will always keep you going if you keep it full it's something that will get you out of bed to work on your project instead of sleeping in something that will cause you to choose to work because you want to instead of doing something you know is less important one way to build it up is to imagine that you've achieved your goal imagine yourself being an animation director at a studio or whatever it is it's a good feeling sometimes we only think about the Giant mountain of work and sweat and not about what's at the top of that mountain you need to think about why you would actually put in all those hours just as important as setting smaller goals that aren't some hazy Mirage way in the distance these give you or something you

can get done in a week or two these give you something very tangible to work toward and those accomplishments Empower you and they prove to yourself that you you are making progress therefore you can keep making progress but it's not easy we all know that improving at something is frustrating because to improve you must fail and failing at something you'd love to be good at isn't Fun look for satisfaction not in doing something well but in your own Improvement never sell yourself short you deserve to achieve your dreams if there's something you want in this life go get it because you can it may take a long time but all you have to do is show up each day and try and eventually you'll get there and when you do you'll be able to do what you love in a way that nobody else can thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you