Monday, August 15, 2011
An Open Letter To Andy Serkis
Dear Mr. Serkis,
If you deserve to be considered for an Academy Award nomination for Acting in regards to your performance motion capture, then every animator who has ever animated a character in any movie deserves consideration as well.
Sincerely,
Tim Borrelli
P.S., Let me clarify:
Let’s ignore the fact that animators have been doing this without motion capture longer than you have been suiting up for it.
If you deserve to be considered for an Academy Award nomination for Acting in regards to your performance motion capture, then every animator who has ever animated a character in any movie deserves consideration as well.
Sincerely,
Tim Borrelli
P.S., Let me clarify:
Recently, you have been quoted as claiming that performance capture actors deserve to be considered for the Academy Awards in Acting categories:
Before I even start, let me say that I feel that you are a great actor. I don’t doubt your acting ability, both on stage and on film. But that’s not the debate here.
From what I gather, here is what you are suggesting. You seem to feel that performances like yours in Lord of the Rings (Gollum), King Kong (King Kong), and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Caesar) should be recognized by The Academy as an individual effort in excellence of acting performance.
Wait. What?
Let’s ignore the fact that animators have been doing this without motion capture longer than you have been suiting up for it.
Performance capture is the digital capture of a performance of an individual actor, to be later applied to a digital character. Yet according to you, “…there are two parts to the process. The first part is capturing the performance. Only later down the line do you start seeing the characters being painted over frame by frame using pixels."
First, that doesn’t sound like an individual performance to me.
Second, painted over? Using pixels? For a guy who has positioned himself to be the spokesperson for performance capture, it sounds like you don't quite understand what goes into the entire process.
Ignoring the fact that there is nothing “being painted over frame by frame using pixels” (almost) anywhere in the process, you seem to be ignorant of what happens to your performance data after you walk off the set. Many times, chunks of data need to be thrown out entirely and done by hand. Also, it is quite often that the actor’s proportions don’t match that of the digital characters, requiring a remapping of the motion. This may not seem like it affects a performance, but it in fact does. Different proportions means poses don’t read the same. It means a slouch on a short actor is a hunchback on a tall character. It means delicate interactions often need to be heavily modified or redone with animation due to differing limb lengths. I could go on.
Long story short, it means the performance is not 1-to-1 from performance capture to screen.
Furthermore, you claim that "Performance-capture technology is really the only way that we could bring these characters to life… It's the way that Gollum was brought to life, and King Kong, and the Na'vi in Avatar and so on and it's really another way of capturing an actor's performance.”
You then go on to say, “That's all it is, digital make-up."
What. The. Hell.
Well, makeup artists HAVE an Oscar category. So are you also suggesting that the people behind taking his performance to the big screen be considered in that category? When you say “that success using the technique can be rewarded with current accolades,” is that what you mean? Should the modelers, animators, painters, shader TDs, lighters, etc., be considered for Makeup and Costume Design?
Makeup and Costume Design teams do amazing work. I just have trouble seeing how modelers, animators, painters, shader TDs, lighters, etc. fit into those categories.
Or are you referring to the VFX category (which, while valid, is a much broader category than acting), or even the lesser known, non-televised technology categories? Are you basically saying that your performance, which wouldn’t even be viewable without those aforementioned teams of people, is more deserving of public recognition?
I, as well as many others, won’t argue that motion capture data is only as good as the actor in the suit. I have directed and worked with motion capture data from actors on both ends of the talent spectrum. I agree that without the proper direction and performance, the end result that I produced wouldn’t be as emotional, as powerful, or as accurate.
However, I also know that without a talented digital character team (animators, modelers, TDs, etc.), that performance will NEVER look as intended.
What you've done here, Mr. Serkis, is downplay the contribution that the whole team makes to bring a character like Gollum to life. What’s worse is that you aren’t alone. In this featurette on the making of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the animation team is completely overlooked!
[フレーム]
Is the technology that Weta developed awe-inspiring and exciting? Hell yes it is. I’d love to be on set just for a day and see what the technology is like from start to finish. It would be amazing (and after writing this I may never get the chance). But to see the contribution of an entire discipline glossed over so readily by both a recognizable name (your own, Andy Serkis!) AND a production team is disheartening and frustrating.
Yet, as infuriating as that may be, this is not the point I want to make here. That point is:
If you deserve to be considered for an Academy Award nomination for Acting, then every animator who has ever animated a character in any movie deserves consideration as well.
Animators, both hand-keyed and motion capture artists, breathe life into their characters. They push performances of their characters to an artistic limit, based on the direction they are given. Many even use video reference- animators often of themselves performing (yes, ACTING) the scenes they are working on, mocap artists using video shot on set.
Not to single one person out, but some do it REALLY WELL, like this example (password: education):
[フレーム]
Rio Comparison Reel from jeff gabor on Vimeo.And this one:
[フレーム]
It should be clear that this guy is an amazing animator. He’s also a great example of an animator using his own performance to bring characters to life (in the case of Rio, a female lead, and supporting male, and a bird.) As animators, we’ve been taught that video reference is a powerful tool. Like any tool, however, it requires training and practice to get right.
Some things may come more naturally (in a male animator’s case, the supporting male). Some things may take more creativity (like humanizing a creature, such as a bird). Even other things may take a bigger investment into the movement and emotion of the character (the female lead).
However, the end result in Rio didn’t come from just an animator’s performance. It came from the ability to translate that acting into what the digital character warranted.
Like you, Mr. Serkis, animators use their performance to improve and sell the characters they are acting for, in the interest of the whole story.
So my question for you is this:
Don’t animators also deserve individual recognition from the Academy for Acting?
Mr. Serkis, please leave a comment here, or drop me a line. I welcome the discussion, as would many others who do and do not share my opinion.
Mr. Serkis, please leave a comment here, or drop me a line. I welcome the discussion, as would many others who do and do not share my opinion.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Designing Animation For Speed
This was cross-posted to AltDevBlogADay. Look for a powerlifting corollary sometime soon!
Everything I ever needed to know about animation, I learned from watching Looney Tunes.
Seriously.
Sure, I went to school. I learned HOW to animate there and from other sources, but none of that taught me what I needed to know about animation as much as watching Bugs outsmart Elmer, Daffy play the second banana, Foghorn Leghorn fumble about, or Wile E. Coyote fall to yet another demise.
Gravity Doesn’t Exist Until You Look Down
Bugs is the popular one. Daffy is the memorable one (Stuuuuuuupor Duck!). Foghorn, well, I say… I say, he was fun to watch with his contraptions. However, Wile E. Coyote is the one that sticks out the most to me.
Not only is it entertaining to watch poor Wile E. try and try again to catch the Roadrunner (with a seemingly unlimited credit line with the Acme corporation), it is also a very good study of how developing a formula can allow an animator to work efficiently while keeping a high quality bar.
Take the timing of Wile E.'s fall, for instance. Did you know that every time he falls, it happens in the same exact number of frames? He tends to walk/fly/float/propel himself over a ledge, and doesn't fall until he looks down (for Wile, gravity doesn't exist until he does this). He then falls over N frames until you see a puff of smoke and hear a distant "splat."
This comedic timing (combined with a happy accident regarding the audio level of his "splat") allowed the Looney Tunes animators to build up to this punchline without worrying if the punchline itself would feel right. It also ensured that re-takes weren't going to be needed- once that formula was set, it was followed.
Set Your Pace
For game animation, I take the same approach, especially for transition animations. In fact, on our current project, we try to animate all transitions to occur on 6, 12, 18 or 24 frames. Each of these frame counts corresponds with the desired perceived pacing of the character's thought process. For example:
"Ready Now!" - 6 frames
"Get moving and STOP!" - 12 frames
"I gotta be ready before I get there" - 18 frames
"OK, I'm gonna pick my spot and get ready when I'm there." - 24 frames
These frame numbers allowed us to build a visual language with these transitions. For example, the faster ones are more immediate and needed for faster gameplay responsiveness (say, for aiming and shooting). Having them all on a 6-frame count holds the player's expectation that if “I've gotta shoot, I'll get there in .2 seconds.” It also allows us to later add interruptible follow-through for an extra 6 or 12 frames without that extra motion feeling out of place.
In contrast, the 18/24 frame transitions typically denote the end of longer, deliberate movement- the player knows they are moving at a certain speed and when they have reached their destination, the transition will carry that speed to a stop. These extra frames allow us to sell the character's weight at that stop, which in turn creates a mental acceptance by the player that it took longer than the 6/12 frame motions.
Fast Iteration
The next benefit to the frame counts is that they are easily scalable from one to the other. Personally, I set poses every 3-6 frames. This lets me easily slide the keys around if I need to make timing adjustments after the animations are implemented. These adjustments can also be easily scriptable (for fast tests), so I can adjust the timing of 160 animations very quickly to see if the new length feels right before going ahead and hand-tweaking them.
Since I've spaced out my keys in a uniform way, I can re-time the motions much more efficiently.
Lastly, these frame formulas give us efficient consistency. Since a uniform length exists, once we nail down the first key animation, we can modify it to create other motions in the same pool. For example, If we need to transition from a non-shooting pose to a shooting pose, we’ll work on a key motion that gets across the character’s intent and the player’s feel. Once design deems the look and feel to be good for gameplay, we can create every other transition in that pool much quicker.
Happy Accidents
Much like the audio level on the splat of Wile E. Coyotes's fall (see the book Chuck Redux), coming up with the multiples of 6 formula was actually a happy accident- the Source Engine's default engine blend value is .2 seconds (6 frames!) In order to not disrupt existing gameplay, we started animating to that frame number. After implementing many transitions, it was apparent that not all of them could or should work on 6 frames. The easiest thing to do was scale the motion by 200% and work back from there. Lo and behold, 200% worked great, so we redid all of those motions with twice the frame count.
Since that pacing looked good, we extrapolated that 18 and 24 frames would be logical to try next. It worked, and now we have a (undocumented till now) visual language for our transitions. We've since extended this philosophy to our movement system, and the animators who work on that pump out high quality motions like nobody's business.
It's Still Creative!
Purist animators out there might be shocked that we take shortcuts in order to produce efficient, high-quality animation at a fast pace. The fact of the matter is Warner Brothers, and even Disney, did the same thing! Read Chuck Redux, or watch this:
[フレーム]
The key is to not get so married to those formulas that we are unwilling to change them when they no longer work, or get stale. If that happens, we play with new formulas and do more timing tests until we get it right. In the end, the better we can nail down the punchline, the more time we can spend on the fun part of getting there.
Feedback!
I'd love to hear from other animators and designers what their processes for this are, as well! So speak up, tell your friends to read this and rip me to shreds, tell me how awesome I am or somewhere in between. I'm always looking for different techniques and opinions!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Power Animator
(ed. note: If you’ve made your way here from http://altdevblogaday.com, welcome!)
“There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” – Booker T. Washington
If there was ever a quote that equally embodies my life as an animator and as a powerlifter, this is it. Aside from the literal translation regarding weightlifting, I feel that this quote also demonstrates how we can excel in our areas of interest by seeking out and nurturing an encouraging an environment of constructive feedback.
For today’s post, I’m going to tell parallel stories based on my experiences as an animator and a powerlifter, and show how opening myself up to external feedback has helped me grow throughout my careers in both.
2005, Champaign , Illinois
On that day at Gold's Gym, I was benching and curling, because THAT'S WHAT MEN DO (that's how my mind worked back then). I saw Jessica go over to the Olympic lifting platform and start warming up for squats. I told her, in my all-knowing way, that those would hurt her knees and to be careful. She looked at me with the look that I now know is reserved for idiocy and when the dog poops on the carpet. At the time, I took it for confusion, as though I had just unleashed upon her this knowledge that she was sorely lacking.
She continued on with her squats while I performed my "superior" bench sets. After I was done, I went over to the squat rack to load up a bar. Jessica comes over and asks what I am doing, since "clearly squats are supposed to be bad for your knees!" I reply "I’m gonna do some curls!" I get the same look as before. She stays over on the platform and starts loading up a bar on the ground, and then starts lifting it! I have no idea what she is doing but it MUST be bad for her back, and I tell her as much.
She ignored me. She was deadlifting, and that was serious business for her.
Later on that night Jessica turned to me and asked "So, what are your fitness goals?" I replied "To get bigger and stronger, of course." She proceeded to ask me how I was planning on getting stronger if all I ever did was bench, curl, and use the nautilus machines for my legs. I made some excuse about how I used to squat in college and my knees were all messed up from it.
Then she said it:
This is apparently what I looked like, hair and all.
"You know you have chicken legs, right? You're shaped like a light bulb ready to tip over. And what the hell is with curling in the squat rack? Frat boys do that."
I was disheartened, totally bummed out, but more importantly, I was confused. How could this happen? I spent YEARS in the gym, doing everything anyone ever told me was the right thing to do. I read websites and Men's Health! They HAD to be right!
More importantly, HOW IS A GIRL TELLING ME I AM WRONG ABOUT WEIGHTLIFTING? GAAHH!!
More importantly, HOW IS A GIRL TELLING ME I AM WRONG ABOUT WEIGHTLIFTING? GAAHH!!
Jessica and I didn't go to the gym together for a few days after that. My ego was a bit... shattered. I wish I could say that I had resources to turn to, but as I looked around, I realized I had none. No books, no expertise to draw on. That's when it hit me- Jessica was my doorway to proper strength training. She knew more about it than anyone I knew, and she could prove her knowledge worked.
Training in a vacuum that way had stunted my growth in a literal sense- I wasn't getting any bigger, faster or stronger. I was living in a viscous cycle of train -> get frustrated -> try something above my strength -> get hurt -> recover -> repeat, and I needed it to end.
That summer, I asked Jessica to design me a program that would improve my strength and help me shed my chicken legs. She did one better and show me how to design that program, reading through books and teaching me different training techniques and calorie intakes. Over that summer I gained 20 pounds, most if not all of which was muscle in my legs. Since then I've gone on to compete in both powerlifting and strongman competitions, and will continue to do so till they have to scrape me off of the platform.
So I guess getting strength training advice from a girl isn’t so bad after all. J
I invite you to read my parallel story about animation on AltDevBlogADay (http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/07/22/power-animator/)
Monday, June 20, 2011
Law of Diminishing Returns
Overtime can creep into all facets of our lives. In the case of me being both a powerlifter and a video game developer, overtime has come in the form of overtraining and crunching, respectively.
For powerlifters, overtraining generally involves training the same muscle group(s) at a higher than normal rate with the expectation that the increased training volume will result in increased strength gains. For game developers, crunching is typically a point in a project that requires developers to work extra hours to reach a milestone, the belief being that that the extra time put in will result in higher quantity and quality of work.
In my experience with both powerlifting and game development, the main factor in overtime having beneficial vs. negative results has been how far away the target result is; i.e., how long you are working overtime, and what you hope to accomplish by doing so. Our ability to cope with such overtime hinges heavily on the amount of time we have to recover from engaging in it. This recovery, whether or active (by, say, deep tissue massage or engaging in an unrelated interest) or passive (by relaxing on the couch or playing video games), can only work if those needing it are given the proper amount of time and resources to ALLOW it to work.
Personally, I’ve experienced both bad and good overtime.
I’ve overtrained my deadlift (by either training too frequently or using too much weight) to the point where I ruptured a disc in my back (multiple times), and I’ve crunched for 100 hours a week, 7 days a week, for 9 months straight (again, multiple times). Each time this occurred, I took a week off. Yes, A WEEK. For training, my ego took over- I felt invincible (and I surely could recover quickly, right?) For game dev, that’s what I was given for my efforts, and so that’s what I took. Plus, I was in a culture that required being present in order to thrive. In both cases, after that first week I went a little lighter on my weights and my hours for a few more weeks, but my true recovery period was only ONE WEEK.
I have also experienced good overtime. I've overtrained my deadlift and seen incredible gains by pushing myself on heavy days and taking a month away from the next heavy session. I've worked 50-60 hour weeks, with 5 (and rarely 6) days a week for no longer than 2 or 3 weeks to get a deliverable out the door, and have produced work that was higher quality and more rewarding, with no negative effect on my health or marriage.
What made the good overtime better than the bad?
After the bad overtime, I was done. I thought I had recovered enough, so when I tried to (physically and mentally) get back into both activities, I couldn’t. I was done, and wanted out. I considered quitting both powerlifting and game development after the last bad overtime experience with each.
In the case of the good overtime experiences, I was able to take the proper amount of time off that both my body and mind needed to recover not just AFTER the overtime, but DURING it. The work I put during these smaller pushes was of higher quality, more rewarding in the end, and most importantly, kept me engaged in I was doing and looking forward to getting back to it at full tilt as soon as I could.
It can be argued that if we want to be successful, we have to push ourselves harder than the average in our fields. It doesn’t, however, have to have a negative affect on the things we are passionate about. We’ve all read the reports, seen the opinion pieces, heard about EA Spouses and Kaos’ “thousand yard stare.” I’ve read articles on how overtraining has blown out knees, biceps, backs, and worse. Everyone universally agrees that too much overtime is bad- Bad for your health, bad for relationships, bad for studio morale, bad bad bad.
Overtime exists and it’s not going away. I’m not suggesting that it does. I’m not going to rant about crunch time ruining lives. I’m not going to claim that my life has been horribly affected by working overtime or training too hard.
I am, however, going to say this- we all need to manage it better.
I don’t mean that we need to plan better (we know), or avoid feature/exercise creep (we try), or never put in overtime (we will). I mean that we as individuals need to manage how we represent ourselves while working overtime. We need to be conscious of the fact that people who are interested in what we do (powerlifting, game development, insert-your-interest-here) are going to look at us as an example. They’ll see us doing stupid things in the gym or working 100 hours a week, and see us wearing both of those things like honor badges. They’ll see us tweeting about how we’re “crunching to make the game better for you, the consumer!”, or read our Facebook post about how we just totally killed a training session and can’t walk right now- but hey, "no pain no gain!"
Those people will enter our fields and expect that to be the norm, the right way to do things, and they will never question those methods until they too are burnt out. And that’s a damn shame, because we can prevent it. We can teach these newcomers a different lesson- to not make the mistakes that we did. We need to encourage them to come into our industries and change them for the better.
When all is said and done, people will only remember the 4-million-on-day-one sellers, and not the people who worked hard and sacrificed to get the game to that point. We’ll only remember the monster numbers that a powerlifter put up at Worlds, but we’ll never see the training that was put in to achieve that. So let’s take back that part. Let’s do it smarter. Let’s follow the Law of Diminishing Returns.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Looking Back To Forge Ahead
It's been a while since I've written anything. I've had a few ideas kicking around that I am still working on, but overall I haven't been happy enough with any of them to post them.
One reason for this is that I have been in a bit of a funk lately, from a creativity standpoint. I kind of lost my mojo, as it were, and have been working on getting it back. Writers call it writer's block, I don't know what the hell animators call it, but I have it. I can point to a few external factors that have been contributing to my overall funk, and I know they'll pass.
This week was going particularly bad, and tonight was meant to be a mindless, woo-sah, clear everything from my mind night. My wife went out with a girlfriend, I ordered pizza and watched random crap on TV. Recipe for success, right? Wrong. None of it was working.
Then I stumbled across a few things that I had written in the past that put my current funk into perspective. Some were recent, some were ancient. The recent ones reaffirmed decisions that I made last summer, and reminded me that my wife and I are in a better place.
But reading those still didn't shake my funk.
The ancient ones, however, are helping. They are Developer Diaries I wrote for IGN 11 years ago. They are poorly written, and I just sound young with my words. However, I saw something else there- A passion for what I was doing. A somewhat intelligent ability to break down my animation processes (and caffeine habits). A desire to attack any challenge head on and do the best I can. No, better than that.
There were also REALLY BAD stick figure drawings.
My point here is that we all get stuck in a rut creatively. It sucks. While we need to constantly push forward with our craft, every so often it doesn't hurt to look back to where we came from. Sometimes, that older version of you might have something to teach the current you.
Oh, and in case anyone is morbidly curious, here are the links to the Dev Diaries:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/075/075980p1.html
http://pc.ign.com/articles/080/080913p1.html
Enjoy.
One reason for this is that I have been in a bit of a funk lately, from a creativity standpoint. I kind of lost my mojo, as it were, and have been working on getting it back. Writers call it writer's block, I don't know what the hell animators call it, but I have it. I can point to a few external factors that have been contributing to my overall funk, and I know they'll pass.
This week was going particularly bad, and tonight was meant to be a mindless, woo-sah, clear everything from my mind night. My wife went out with a girlfriend, I ordered pizza and watched random crap on TV. Recipe for success, right? Wrong. None of it was working.
Then I stumbled across a few things that I had written in the past that put my current funk into perspective. Some were recent, some were ancient. The recent ones reaffirmed decisions that I made last summer, and reminded me that my wife and I are in a better place.
But reading those still didn't shake my funk.
The ancient ones, however, are helping. They are Developer Diaries I wrote for IGN 11 years ago. They are poorly written, and I just sound young with my words. However, I saw something else there- A passion for what I was doing. A somewhat intelligent ability to break down my animation processes (and caffeine habits). A desire to attack any challenge head on and do the best I can. No, better than that.
There were also REALLY BAD stick figure drawings.
My point here is that we all get stuck in a rut creatively. It sucks. While we need to constantly push forward with our craft, every so often it doesn't hurt to look back to where we came from. Sometimes, that older version of you might have something to teach the current you.
Oh, and in case anyone is morbidly curious, here are the links to the Dev Diaries:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/075/075980p1.html
http://pc.ign.com/articles/080/080913p1.html
Enjoy.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Designimators
editor's (my) note: Mike Carr's post beat me to the punch, but I still wanted to share my experience because I already wrote this :)
Over the course of my career, I have interviewed a lot of animators. Phone interviews, on-site, at schools. Some wanted to just animate. Some wanted to be managers right out of school. Some were more cinematically inclined and shied away from in-game motions, and some were the opposite. One guy claimed to have run over 300 motion capture shoots in a four year period! (we later found out he counted each day as a full shoot) It's safe to say year over year I had thought I'd seen it all, and year after year I was wrong.
Case in point- over a one to two year period, I saw an influx of animation applicants who all fancied themselves as designers. When asked what their goals as an animator were, without fail they expressed a desire to move into design. This is a valid desire (the current lead designer on Saints Row 3 started at Volition as an animator), as we're all in the games industry because we want to make games. In reality, to some extent we have input to the design of the areas we work in. In this case, however, the sheer number of animators wanting to be designers became a topic of conversation enough for one of the animators to deem them "designimators."
These animators felt that animation WAS design (ed. note: here I am referring to the interviewees, not any of the animators. Sorry if that isn't clear). Since they made the characters move and hence had an impact on how a character (quite literally) moved forward in the game, that they were designers. Some had respectable and honorable intentions, but some flat out thought that they had actually designed the last game they worked on and felt that they could immediately be in senior design positions. True or not, it was fairly mind-boggling to hear such claims be made at an interview for a completely different position.
Obviously, I feel differently.
As an animator, I recognize the impact that animation has on gameplay. I've long felt that animation is equal parts design and art in regards to video game development, possibly moreso than other disciplines (I admit I am biased and I'm sure my friends and colleagues in other artistic disciplines will beg to differ, and I welcome that). However, I do not fancy myself a designer nor do I feel that I can do a better job than a designer. My job is to make the animation look as good as possible within the design requirements of the game.
Quite often, the easiest way to satisfy those design requirements is to make sacrifices to the principles of animation. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach. While I have cut frames to "make it feel better" in game, that is only the first step. My goal is to get our timing, blending and "feel" right, before we create final animation that still works within the gameplay design yet follows the principles of animation. During this process, design is king. Animation gives input, but the goal of both disciplines is to make the game fun to play.
I have been fortunate (past and present) to work with talented designers/creative directors. These people have been tolerant of my desire to try to solve their requests and challenges by experimenting with animation solutions that still employ the principles of animation. These experiments have ranged from simple previz animations to full blendtree/state machines in-game that take time, but more often than not yield positive gameplay results without sacrificing animation quality.
As animators, we got into this discipline because we are passionate about breathing life into a character. In games, the "character" isn't just the muscle-bound hero, the large-breasted babe, the Italian Plumber, or the generic soldier. The whole world is the character- the environments, the effects, the writing, the code that runs it all. EVERYTHING. But I never hear of an animator calling themselves a modeler, or a writer, or an effects artist, or a programmer. Animators are not designers. We serve the vision of the game. We animate for design- only in that sense are we "designimators."
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Need A Spot?
In my training log from yesterday I wrote:
"The way this day typically goes is that if one of us (my wife or I) PRs, the other one has to PR to keep pace."
This kind of training applies not just to setting PRs, but to our overall philosophy of pushing each other to continually train and improve. The same kind of mentality should always be present in an animation team (or any team) setting- if we all work to improve and push each other to improve, our overall output will be more efficient and of higher quality.
Some days, we're in the gym and one of us just isn't feeling it. It would be easy to just quit, walk upstairs and eat some ice cream. It would be easy to just say "it wasn't happening today" and have that be that. But we're a team. Teammates are there to pick each other up when they need it, and to work with each other to figure out what will work that day in the gym. We don't want to let each other down. We know that if one of us gave up, the other may not have a successful training session or worse- neither of us will make any progress towards our current training goals.
There are also times where even though we are confident in the lift we are about to do, we need someone to make sure we don't injure ourselves- it's called "spotting" someone. Having a spotter also allows a lifter to go higher in weight during a session- not only due to being safer from injury, but by giving a confidence boost to the lifter that they can lift the weight.
Animation is the same way. There are plenty of days when I or another member of the team just cannot figure out a pose, a motion, timing, etc. An animator will plan it all out, it'll sound great in their mind, and when they go to execute, they just can't get it. When this happens, the team looks at it together (i.e, we "spot" each other). We throw out ideas- some good, some bad, some that will work better for another motion. Some are just so over-the-top hilarious that we know we can't use them, but have fun talking about them. The goal is to come away from that interaction with a fresh perspective on the motion and try it again. I know that for me, sometimes just that interaction with the members of my team is enough to get me over the hump.
This same interaction needs to occur when motions are completed and just aren't working from either a style, gameplay or quality perspective- while I am the lead and do the initial approvals, I try to encourage the team to give feedback on everyone's motions, mine included. This pushes each of us to continually put out high quality work that fits within the vision of not just the animation direction, but of the game.
For various reasons, however, not everyone is part of a team. This may be due to working better alone, being at a small studio, or being a student or jobless and trying to break in. Aside from those who prefer to work alone (who wouldn't be on my team anyways), I encourage the rest of you to go find yourselves some teammates! Get on Twitter, post on deviantart or polycount or wherever. Meet people via online networking, learn from them, teach them, let them help you improve while you yourself encourage others to improve. Get a spotter, as it were.
Use these powerful forms of social media the right way (i.e., don't be a dick) and you'll find yourself open to a world of people who are trying to do the same as you: improve their craft and become a meaningful part of a team.
"The way this day typically goes is that if one of us (my wife or I) PRs, the other one has to PR to keep pace."
This kind of training applies not just to setting PRs, but to our overall philosophy of pushing each other to continually train and improve. The same kind of mentality should always be present in an animation team (or any team) setting- if we all work to improve and push each other to improve, our overall output will be more efficient and of higher quality.
Some days, we're in the gym and one of us just isn't feeling it. It would be easy to just quit, walk upstairs and eat some ice cream. It would be easy to just say "it wasn't happening today" and have that be that. But we're a team. Teammates are there to pick each other up when they need it, and to work with each other to figure out what will work that day in the gym. We don't want to let each other down. We know that if one of us gave up, the other may not have a successful training session or worse- neither of us will make any progress towards our current training goals.
There are also times where even though we are confident in the lift we are about to do, we need someone to make sure we don't injure ourselves- it's called "spotting" someone. Having a spotter also allows a lifter to go higher in weight during a session- not only due to being safer from injury, but by giving a confidence boost to the lifter that they can lift the weight.
Animation is the same way. There are plenty of days when I or another member of the team just cannot figure out a pose, a motion, timing, etc. An animator will plan it all out, it'll sound great in their mind, and when they go to execute, they just can't get it. When this happens, the team looks at it together (i.e, we "spot" each other). We throw out ideas- some good, some bad, some that will work better for another motion. Some are just so over-the-top hilarious that we know we can't use them, but have fun talking about them. The goal is to come away from that interaction with a fresh perspective on the motion and try it again. I know that for me, sometimes just that interaction with the members of my team is enough to get me over the hump.
This same interaction needs to occur when motions are completed and just aren't working from either a style, gameplay or quality perspective- while I am the lead and do the initial approvals, I try to encourage the team to give feedback on everyone's motions, mine included. This pushes each of us to continually put out high quality work that fits within the vision of not just the animation direction, but of the game.
For various reasons, however, not everyone is part of a team. This may be due to working better alone, being at a small studio, or being a student or jobless and trying to break in. Aside from those who prefer to work alone (who wouldn't be on my team anyways), I encourage the rest of you to go find yourselves some teammates! Get on Twitter, post on deviantart or polycount or wherever. Meet people via online networking, learn from them, teach them, let them help you improve while you yourself encourage others to improve. Get a spotter, as it were.
Use these powerful forms of social media the right way (i.e., don't be a dick) and you'll find yourself open to a world of people who are trying to do the same as you: improve their craft and become a meaningful part of a team.
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