And the 2017 24 Hours begins...

In past month, students have been preparing for this year's 24 Hours Animation Contest and have formed into teams. Each team has 5 students, some team members have been through the process before, while others are doing this for the first. Everyone is up for the challenge.

Each year this contest increases in size due to its popularity. Last year's contest in 2016 there were 27 schools participating and 124 teams or 620 students in competition. This year, there are 44 schools schools participating with 183 Teams completing or 915 students all working to complete a :30 second animated film based on the theme in 24 hours.

 

The 2017 Woodbury University 24 Hours animation teams gathered in the Design Center's D105 at 3pm. Great hordes of excited Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors gathered as timid,but curious Freshman stayed to watch. The live streaming announcement came from Aubry Mintz in his top secret classroom, hidden somewhere in Long Beach, CA.

The goal of the 24 hours contest is to create a 30 second animation piece from a theme which is announced at the beginning by 24 Hours. Aubry Mintz, Associate Professor at CSULB welcomes all the school's participating, thanks the sponsors who have donated prizes to the final top five winners and finally announces the theme of this year's 24 Hours contest.

This year's theme was announced by Mintz on Friday, Oct 6th at 3:30pm PST and is as follows.

The 24 HOURS 2017 THEME:

Is based on the Sesame Street song, " One of these things is not like the others."

Let the Brain Storming begin! 
And off they go in a wild giggle of animation students to find an area to work. Some are on Macs, others are on PCs and a few have taken over the Stop Motion studio. Snacks appear along with laptops, pencils and pens. Dry erase boards are suddenly filling up with thumbnail sketches, words, images and ideas are starting to be born.

 

 

 

The Creative process is alive tonight and everyone is working on turning this year's theme into their own unique vision. There are a variety of animation projects being produced from Traditional, to Digital and even stop motion.

Team Deception from Toondini on Vimeo.

But with great brain power comes food for thought. At around 9pm, Several pizzas were delivered. 

 

All the students took a quick dinner break and returned to a long night of animation ahead.

And into the night they work.

Next Post: The final WU films

Organizing your Animation work: Part 3

Exposure Sheets

When working in traditional animation, Animators needed to use an exposure sheet to
figure out the timing of the scene, dialogue information, the camera's field of view and camera movement such as a pan or zoom. They can also indicate scene transitions like Fades or Dissolves.

Why are Exposure or X sheets so important? These are the sheets where you figure out the best timing for your animation. You will be generating a lot of drawings and need to label them so if they dropped all over the floor, you how to put them back in the correct order before you had to shoot or scan them.

The exposure sheets were also filled out so the cameraman knew which drawings were needed for each individual frame. This sheet was filled out so accurately that it soon became known as a "Dope sheet" in that any idiot could understand how to shoot the animation by looking at the instructions on the sheet. Today, you can still find an updated version of the "Dope sheet" in Maya software.

These are the tools the audience will never know about, but will see the result of.

How to read and write Exposure Sheets

Think of the exposure sheet as a Table of Animation Contents which shows how everything fits together to make up an animated scene. Here is an exposure sheet with dialogue notes on the side, each column is a different layer or level of animation, which all fits together to make one final image.

No, your eyes aren't going bad, I will replace the below image with a better one soon.

Parts of an Exposure Sheet

Each line represents a single frame.

ACTION: might be blank is the area on the sheet where you label what is going on in the scene. Example: Frame 30: Guy walks  in from Stage Left. Frame 60: Guy stops to look at Hole on floor... Hold pose for 10 frames. Frame 70: Anticipates Jump Frame 75: Leaps over hole. Frame 83: Lands, Frame 89; Into standing pose, etc.

CAMERA: This is the Camera info, if the camera is stationary, you will mark down what field of view or FIELD (Fld) the camera is at. 12 to 9 Fld could be a wide or Establishing shot, where smaller Fields are for Medium and Close Up shots.

DIAL or SOUND: This is where the dialogue is broken down into frames or if its Narration, the first frame of each word is labelled. You need to know if your sound was recorded at 24 or 30 fps and then keep everything at the same frame rate.

Columns 1 thru 5: These are the different layers or levels you can use to make up a complete image. 1 is the first layer above the Background layer.

BG: is the Background Layer

EX: is an extra layer if needed.

HOW TO WRITE AN EXPOSURE SHEET

When you begin the animation process, you need to know if you will be animating at 24 fps or 30 fps. Whichever frame rate you start with, you need to keep it throughout the entire project.

When you begin animating on paper, you need to put the information onto your exposure sheet using a PENCIL. Never use a pen, because any changes would mean rewriting all the information onto new exposure sheets. Its very easy to label your frames twice or miss a number altogether.

Label your Exposure sheet based on your timing. You don't have to label each line or frame. If there are numbers on the sheets, only label every 10th line. If you have an action that needs to start or end of a certain frame, circle that frame to make it special.

Some sheets look like this...       Just add the tenth frame as so....

1                                                          1
2                                                          2
3                                                          3
4                                                          4
5                                                          5
6                                                          6
7                                                          7
8                                                          8
9                                                          9
0                                                        10
1                                                          1
2                                                          2
3                                                          3
4                                                          4
5                                                          5
6                                                          6
7                                                          7
8                                                          8
9                                                          9
0                                                        20

And so on...

If you are animating to a sound file either for Narration or Lip Sync. You should fill out the X sheets first and then use it as you draw your animation drawings. Each word in 
can be written out to show at what frame the word begins on. 

With Lip Sync sound, you will have to breakdown each word into frames which will require you to "Scrub" your sound track. This process is called "Reading a Soundtrack"

The word "I" can be broken down into two sounds depending how the word was said on the track. "I" could be noted as "Ah" and then "Yee".

X SHEETS SHOULD BE IN EACH SCENE FOLDER AND BE ONLY FOR THAT SCENE. DON'T MAKE MULTIPLE SCENES ON A BUNCH OF EXPOSURE SHEETS. EACH SCENE EQUAL ONE GROUP OF EXPOSURE SHEETS.

Begin by filling out your KEY POSE drawings first and Circle the Key drawings and do not circle your inbetweens. KEYS are circled so you know they are Key poses. Some people will circle all the drawings, but this doesn't help your inbetweener to find the Key Poses.

More to come soon.

The Traditional Animation Show!

Lavalle Lee has a great website called "Traditional Animation", which you should bookmark right away if you haven't already. And now, you can check out his first interview with Disney Veteran Dominic Carola. What is especially exciting about this video is the second half, when Mr. Carola goes step by step thru his animating process while doing a rough scribble pass of his character from "Tiki Trouble".

The Traditional Animation Show from Traditional Animation on Vimeo.

This is a must see for any animation students who are trying to learn how to animate traditionally, figure out their work process and keep the artform alive! Thank You Laville and Dominic!

My Animation is in this Documentary!

Well sort of...

Several years ago, I worked on creating character designs based on the real life family members in this documentary. In fact, if you go back to an earlier posting of this blog, you will see some of those early designs.

I came up with the designs with the understanding that I would create the storyboards, the animatic and eventually the final animation in the film. I could make my own documentary of this process, but it wouldn't be as enjoyable as the "Meet the Patels" documentary has finally become.

After 6 years of hard work and dedication, Ravi and Geeta have finally finished their epic about dating in the modern world from a traditional India perspective. Its a very fun and often touching look at the struggles of Ravi trying to find his sole mate, while his sister Geeta documents the process.

They have a Kickstarter campaign to get their film into the theaters nationwide, but they need your help asap. You can learn more by click on the photo of Ravi below!

We have 30 days to put Meet the Patels into theaters. Um, help?

 
Looks like Geeta and Ravi's film will finally get on the big screen and perhaps even at a theater near you! The Kickstarter funding was a success and if you ever get a chance to see it, here's the latest trailer!

 http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/meetthepatels/

UPDATE: You will get a chance to see the film in September which is not to be missed and worth the price of admission! If you have seen it, please let us know what you thought of it.

Animation Subjects

I've been adding little bits of animation tips, tricks and tidbits, but now I am inviting people to send me an animation subject you would like information about. I would like to go over the inbetweening process of animaton, but I want to make sure that there is enough interest or not. 

I'm asking for your help in exploring some part of the animation process that you are interested in. This will also help me to see if I can explain it to you. Please send your animation question to me at the email below. Hopefully we will both learn something new.

heyjimr@gmail.com

Here's something that I've been trying to work out. While in college centuries ago, I remember seeing a zoetrope from a glass bottle. A string was tied to a hole in the bottle's lid which was screwed onto the top of the bottle. The bottle could hung up and when spun, you could see the animated frames moving through the slits around the bottle.

I built a prototype of this, but it didn't work out because the slits had to be in the correct alignment to make the spinning work. Its a very clever way of creating a zoetrope using cel vinyl paint to make the artwork on the glass, but as soon as I get the slit alignment riight, I will be happy to show you how to make one.

If anyone has made one of these before, please let me know and send me an email. I think this would be a cool tutorial for making simple animation art. Also I invite you to send me anything you've come across as well.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

Sheila Graber Interview

While working on a post for my WatchCat Blog, I was researching the subject of Cat characters in Literature and came across this piece of animation by Sheila Graber.

 But what really impressed me was all the animation she has made over the years. She also has been teaching animation since the 1970s, has given workshops and has even written a book about animation as well. I found her website from her YouTube channel and asked her if I could get an interview from her for this post on Animateducated. And so, here it goes...

JR: You're my first Animator interviewee ever, so please keep this in mind.Thank you for your time to do this. I grew up learning a lot about animation on my own and sadly I have never heard or seen any of your work before. I was wondering if you could let us know how you first discovered animation?

SG: My Mam took me to see Fantasia when I was 7 (The movie and I were both born 1940) and I remember clearly the Devil growing out of the mountain in Night on Bare mountain.. The fact that the animation moved to the music was huge for me in later life. However I,( like most people ) always thought that animation could only be done in big studios - not something you could do alone. In 1970 I was divorced and had time to play about with a Super8 camera I bought for holiday films - in the instruction book it said you could "bump on your titles by using a single frame release" - I tried it ..by animating buttons.. when the film came back 3 weeks later the fact those buttons moved by themselves was MAGIC.. I was hooked .. and that was it I just kept going after that until the present day.

JR: What was the first class did you teach? Was it easy to teach? What did you learn from the process of teaching? Do you have a teaching degree? When did you first teach kids animation?

SG:  I trained in Fine Art at Sunderland Art College and went on to be trained in teaching in 1961 at Birmingham School for training Art Teachers - this was where I met the concept that changed my life - we were shown that EVERYONE is an artist in their own way and it was our job to provide an environment in which everyone could take according to what they needed to be able to grow and express themselves thus gaining confidence in their own ability - whether they went on to "do art" or not did not matter -the fact they had felt what it feels like to succeed at something was enough to keep them going throughout life.

I put what I learned into practice in a tough Secondary School (aged 11-18) where no one really wanted to learn but found if I could gain the pupils interest they would turn negative energy into positive - or destruction into creation.. it WORKED  in art lessons and when I began my little animation experiments in 1970 I thought the folks I teach would LOVE this. and they did. At first as a cine-club after school .. but later I was able to actually build animation into the curriculum so the classes could animate everything from how your heart beats to volcanoes exploding..and I finally got animation accepted throughout the UK as an actual subject in it's own right in 1975.

I learned so much from them about timing etc.. what might have taken me weeks to perfect they sorted out in minutes.. children have a natural feeling for animation… obviously they love watching it - how much better to make their own! You can see some short clips on my demo: https://youtu.be/rnhHg9DXy0s

 

From 2008 to 2015 I've been working on making apps for children/families.. hoping to influence art teachers with "Quizicat Cracks the Arty Code" - that idea goes right back to 1961.   http://www.graber-miller.com/Quizicatapps.html

JR: You have so many films under your belt and in your storage room, How many animation films have you made?

SG: Over 100 16 mm films - now stored in a film archive in the UK.

http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/content/sheila-graber

I worked in Super8 from 1970 - 1973/4 then 16mm from then until about 1991. From then I used Video and Mac Computers.. and from 2003/4 totally computers - drawing with a wacom tablet and using Painter software. as in "lifeline" 

From 2005 I have used computers to make books from some of the animated series I've made.. along with "Animation a Handy Guide"  a book & Interactive DVD

http://www.graber-miller.com/BookPage01.html

JR: This might sound weird, but when I was making my first 16mm film Cat & Rat, when I was finished shooting and editing it together, I felt a little depressed in the way a woman sometimes does after childbirth. I said it sounds weird, but you spend months with this idea  in your head and you spent all your time working on it, thinking about it and when its finished, your done, has this ever happened to you?

SG:  It certainly has in the sense that after months working with a particular piece of music as sound track and timing every note -on completion of the film I did NOT want to hear that music tracks for a LONG time.. and also once I'd seen that the movie worked OK - I  lost interest in that too..moving on to the next idea.
 
JR: We both have seen the animation process change over the years, from 2D to Computer Animation. Is there anything you miss? Anything you don't miss? Anything you think we need to keep going?

SG: I love the fact that all children now have total access to the the ability to MAKE animation via their tablet's or phones from a very early age - I would REALLY like to see schools encouraging their use throughout the curriculum to LEARN.. alas most pupils use these amazing learning tools for Facebooking or games only and teachers ban them. Or when they are used in schools it is really as a portable Whiteboard where the pupils watch and listen but do NOT actually create anything themselves.

It does not matter WHAT gear is being used - it is the THE IDEA behind the animation that counts… I used to teach animation in college to the folks who went on to become game programmers.. I once asked them if could they please find a popular game that did NOT involve killing or shooting.. stunned silence in the class. Two week later, a lad came running in saying gleefully that he'd FOUND one… it was about a shepherd and sheep herding.. since then we do have Sims and a few more positive animated games. Let's hope we have many more in the future… which I reckon is BRIGHT!

I gave up teaching in 1980 to become full time professional animator after having been commissioned to make a series of 10X 10min. movies for world TV. I had 3 XTV series and over 100 shorts running in over 25 countries from 1980 - 1990 teaching is still at the heart of what I do.

JR: Thanks Sheila! To learn more about Sheila Graber, her animation and books, please visit her website: http://www.graber-miller.com/

If you learned something new, click on the ad to the right and the ad below this article, let us know you appreciate animation , Thank You!

Looking for more Animators out there for future interviews.
Contact: heyjimr@gmail.com

Freelance Animation 101

In between full time animation work is a world known as "Freelance". This is often an exciting place when the job you have taken on is working in your favor, however it can turn into a dangerous place when things aren't going so good. I think everyone should freelance now and then to help them use their knowledge and talents they have gained during those full time years of employment.

I have discovered that there are two different laws of Freelancing. One Law is when you really need to find a job, it seems impossible to actually find one at the time. The other Law, is when you finally find a job, several other job opportunities pop up.  I always grumble,"Where were you two months ago?!" I'm sure there are other laws on the subject, but these two seem to be the most common.

When you first are contacted by a potential client, you must find out as much information as you can without sounding too desperate. You're at a party, people are interacting with one another and some approaches you in casual conservation. You aren't going to talk their ear off by telling them everything you did that week and so with the first contact email or phone call, you need to let them tell you what they want.

Here are three important questions you need to find out first. 

1) What is the job? 2) How long will the job last? and 3) What is the budget?

Depending on the job, the last two questions may be answered by the first question. If they are look for an animator to be a part of a team, they will usually ask you what your rate or day rate is. This is where you can loose the job if your rate is higher than what they are willing to pay. By asking if they have a budget sometimes gets them to tell you what they are willing to pay. You should also have some idea already what people are making for the job they are offering.

Here's a really good blog for Animators or any creative freelance person showing why you need to have some sort of contract before you start any project. After you have a contract, you should sent up a payment schedule to make sure you will be paid for the work you do. A good payment schedule is to start with 1/3 of the payment upfront. This will let you know if your client is as honest as you are. You shouldn't start the project until the check is cashed and everything is a-OK.

Be wary of animation jobs or gigs on websites like craigslist. You really have to be careful and make sure you understand the terms of the work. A lot of ads promise that you will be paid on "the backend". This means, you do the work now for free and later, when the theme park opens, you will get a % of the profits. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is a bunch of BS. Not all ads are posted by bad people, you will find a few hidden jems out there every now and then. Bottom line, always have a contract of some kind. If they don't want to sign it, you probably don't want to work with them.

Recently, I began a freelance job, have gotten thru all of the above and now, I'm waiting for my first payment to arrive. Yes, "the check is in the mail," only 8 days and counting. Then I get that email, "What's your address again and how much is the first payment?" Welcome to Freelance..

Next Time: The check arrives...
http://animateducated.blogspot.com/2015/01/freelance-animation-102.html

Happy Halloween!

Animation Principles class at Woodbury University 2014, Guest Lecturer: Tim Burton.
Plus, Can you pick out the student who also works as Mickey Mouse at Disneyland?

WatchCat in Progress!

I thought I would let you know about a new web series I'm working on called "WatchCat". Every Wednesday, I am posting a "Making Of " blog entitled: The WatchCat Files. Without spoiling our first webisode, Its a little behind the scenes and attempt to document the animation progress of this project.

So take a look and see what you think. Any comments or suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated...

You are the client! : Your Choice

Last Week, I invited everyone to pick one of 10 possible rough cartoon character designs. I promised not to mention any names, only which number got the most votes and asked, "Which Cartoon guy do you like and why? " The real Client already made their choice and Thanks for all the emails, Wow!

Ok, here are some of the results...

 Choice #   1  =   42 picks

 Choice #   2  =     5 picks

 Choice #   3  =     0 picks

 Choice #   4  =   28 picks

 Choice #   5  =   37 picks

 Choice #   6  =   13 picks

 Choice #   7  =   94 picks

 Choice #   8  = 138 picks

 Choice #   9  =   17 picks

 Choice # 10  =   12 picks

Thanks again to all 387 of you for sending in your choices. It was great to hear from all of you. One person chose the guy in the middle, under #4, which I completely forgot to give a number.

The real Client chose....

And as soon as I receive my first payment, I will clean up this choice and have a final design for the Client to approve. And so, as they say in France, " Le chèque est dans la poste !"

You are the Client!

Does this ever happen to you? You are working on your own project with a deadline you hope to reach when suddenly, an outside job opportunity comes along. Now you have to drop everything again and work on this other project, which is paying for your time and expertise.

Recently, a short commercial has driven up to my front door and needs my animation help. Its a small car commercial spot which involves two important things. 1) Design a cartoon version of an actual car dealer and 2) Animate the entire :30 spot in October.(ha!)

First, when starting a job you need to find out all the information you can about what they want, when is their deadline and how much will they pay. Once you have some of this info, you need to put together a bid or an estimate of how much time and labor it will take you to accomplish the project. I'm skipping over all this stuff since this is not a business blog and going right for the animation process stuffing.

I will mention that when I bid on this job, it was a totally different idea when my bid was approved. Luckily, even though its was a different idea altogether, the new idea was a lot simplier than the first, but does involve some character designs and rough storyboarding.

Most large studios or ad agencies have a storyboarded concept and character designs already to send off to the chosen animation studio. Smaller places don't.

The client sent me a photo of a real Car Deal guy, who I'm suppose to create a cartoon version of and so, experience has taught me to draw a bunch of rough ideas, number them and let the client decide which one they would like me to do more work on.

And now, You are the client!  

Your Deadline is Friday:10/10/14

Here are 10 possible cartoon characters, perhaps the next Homer Simpson! Which Cartoon guy do you like and if you can tell why? 

The real Client already made their choice, but I want to hear from you!!! You may send me a comment and let me know which number you like and I won't mention your name.  

Vote Early, Vote Often!  Submit by 10/10/14

24 Hours has Begun...

Moments ago, from California State University_Long Beach, Aubry Mintz announced the theme of the 2014 24 Hour Animation Contest will be:
From Animal Farm...
"All Animals are Created Equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

The list of participating schools this year has grown and are CSUF (Fullerton, CA), CSULB (Long Beach, CA), CSUN (Northridge, CA), Kendall College of A/d (Michigan), MTSU (Tennessee), Seneca College (Canada), Sheridan College (Canada), SJSU (San Jose, CA), Queensland (Australia), Westwood (Anaheim, CA) and Woodbury University (Burbank, CA).

Within minutes, the students assembled into smaller groups to attempt to figure how to come up with a short, simple and effective idea. As the teams began to brainstorm to form a solid storyboard, the Faculty must sit on their hands and not help out in any way. They are only there to make sure the equipment is running correctly and that the students are working away.


Last year, I basically worked on my own stuff and occasionally overheard the students discussions and watched their progress. After the 24 Hours were over, 2 projects came out of Woodbury and one of them won first place. It was a real boost to the Seniors who had worked together and were able to make an animated short which tested all the learning from the past four years.

Last year's theme: What if you had 24 hours to live?  Ryan Tengel and her Woodbury University animation team answered the question with this winning short.

From Woodbury University located in Burbank, CA. 4 teams working away on a Friday night.

The next day, the teams are tried, but continue to work until the final deadline at 5pm.

The Freshmen team are hanging in there too...

 

 If you have any comments for the animators, please let us know...  And now, here are their films.

 The Pink Ladies, our Freshmen entry... Curious Rendezvous

Team Evil entry...  Angus and Arthur

Team Magma entry... Just Another Day

 

The Coffee Owls with: Painful Equality

Now that the results are in, take a moment and vote on your favorite. Any comments are welcomed and will be posted for the students to learn and improve from.