Lets talk about animation.
(No… this is not about my PW again.)
Animation Nation is in its forth year this week and I just attended seminars by people in the industry yesterday!
Anyway… before the seminar in the afternoon, I went to help out in mural painting at some steel company which sells steel for construction companies to produce cranes, trucks, etc.. it was very fun! The seven of us (jianhao, sze, honghu, huijun, kaisheng, yilin and I) went down there to paint black outlines. We were instructed to paint just within the pencil lines, and so we did! We had no idea what we were painting, just concentrated on the black lines. It can be quite addictive. At the end of the session, we stood back and we finally realized what we were painting! It was a scene of trucks, cranes, bulldozers, etc. very interesting design. It’s funny how we could not see what we were painting when we just concentrated on the teeny picture, but as you see the big picture it was really good! It was all teamwork too as we took on different parts of the room and also specialized in doing different thickness of lines in line with the brush sizes we were holding on to. A good experience!
Now… back to the seminar on animation.
We attended three seminars in total at the national museum (which was very beautiful after its new makeover by the way.) we had to rush there of course. But it was definitely worth it.
The first seminar was by Nancy Beiman on character design. She is someone who has been in the industry for some 30 years and have worked on major projects like Hercules, treasure island, etc. And, she being a lecturer, she gave very good advice (which I appreciate but don’t really need seeing how I don’t exactly enjoy making animations. :P). like how we must always have the end in mind, which is very true… she also showed us her concept sketches on her characters (her style is the very cutesy kind of characters, like talking vegetables, sounds familiar?) which were frequently rejected but she still did manage to clinch a few characters on the Disney films. Her students’ works were equally amazing.
“Always turn a defect into an asset” – Nancy Beiman
The next seminar was by Auchara Kikanjanas and Kompin Kemgumnird (long thai names…) who worked on the award winning animation and thailand’s first ever animation in 15 years: Khan Kluay. I think the interesting thing about this animation was the fact that they manage to bring the old legend in Thai history to life. It’s like sharing their culture to us! I found it very good for a first attempt at a feature animation. The elephant was very cute too. And I absolutely loved their concept sketches of the story. Beautiful. Oh and Khan Kluay, the elephant has became pretty much a mickey mouse of Thailand! 😀
Lastly, we sat in for the seminar by Dreamworks veterans (this makes them sound very old… but they really are not.), Cameron Hood and Kyle Jefferson. Their presentation on their short “First Flight” (a story about a man ‘trapped in a box’ and finally breaks out of it after meeting a bird and teaching it to fly. The short was very touching yet was funny due to minor details: the cute bird, the man’s butt-crack, the pen ink leak…) was so inspiring especially due to their good chemistry and friendship. It was very fun to listen to them, how they teased each other (Kyle: “ I have never failed before, maybe Cam would want to elaborate on that?”), how they talked about stealing bushes, and their animated voices which came on every so often. Haha. They truly reminded me of Frank and Ollie. I think their eloquence come from their teaching experience? So funny. They answered many questions too (“we took a 24 hour flight to get here so… QUESTIONS?) which were very helpful I guess. The 5 shapes of animation, using the right key-frames, and the 3 keys to a good animation. Great animators, I cant wait for their first feature on supervillians (cough* incredibles *coughs.) coming out in 2010. 😀
“For every failure there’s a success, for every bad film there’s a good one. For every wrong answer, there’s a right answer.” – Cam and Kyle
I think going back to PW, I have indeed learnt a lot about animation through the process, and this really helped me to appreciate animations and the seminar better!
ramblings. 