EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Morgan Williams: As we come to the end of character animation boot camp, I wanted to talk a little bit about some thoughts about what you might do after the course is finished. Now that we've kind of filled your head and hands with a lot of information and new skills, what do you do next? Where do you go from here?

The first thing I would recommend is for sure take a little break, because this is a very intense experience. I'm sure you've worked very hard. You've put in a lot of hard work. Probably good to get a little rest. It's always good to get some break time in between hard work. It's important for learning to have a chance for that learning to kind of settle in a little bit. We've given you a very brief, really, introduction to a big, big, wide world. You still have a lot to learn, but you've learned a lot already.

So take it slow. Give it some time to soak in. Give it some time to think about it, and maybe even review some of the materials, some PDFs. Look back at some of the exercises, but in a relaxed way. Just kind of, oh you know, I was looking at a walk cycle on TV in a cartoon, and you know, maybe look at that walk cycle I did again. But just in a real relaxed kind of chill way where the stress is gone, and you can just have a minute to reflect and think about what it is that you've learned.

I think that's something that everybody needs. There's studies that have been about how sleep helps us learn, for example. Because sleeping and dreaming kind of clean our brain, which is why sometimes you can, for example, practice something late at night and still be kind of screwing it up. But then wake up the next morning and suddenly nail it, because that rest has given your brain a chance to kind of clean out the extraneous and the big ideas kind of emerge to the surface. They even have science on this.

So taking a break is good. Get some sleep. Get some rest. It's also really good to have some other experiences. And this is a more general piece of advice that I think is good for anybody that works in a creative field with heavy hours and long work weeks and that kind of thing. That you really do need to get away from it sometimes in order to feed your own creativity.

Your experiences that you have outside of your work build new experiences and new imagery and new ideas in your work. So it's important to get out. Get away from the computer. Don't always be looking for reference on the computer. Look for some reference in a coffee shop, at a sporting event, at a dance recital. Have hobbies, do things that are unrelated. I like music for example, so I like to play music. And it feeds my work, because there's so many connections between music and animation obviously.

But doing something that isn't animation, helps feed that by getting me away from it, giving me a different perspective, giving me a different point of view. And again, just kind of clearing the brain a little bit. Blowing out the cobwebs a little bit.

Dlew, aka David Lewandowski, the great motion designer and director, he was at Ringling, and that was one of his top pieces of advice for young artists, was do other things besides your work. Go kayaking. Go out to dinner. Go visit friends. Take a road trip. Having those other experiences keep you fresh as an artist. And if all you do is chain yourself to your work, you'll get boring. Because if your life is boring, your work will be boring. So this is sort of bigger advice beyond Character Animation Bootcamp. Take breaks. Have other experiences. Do things. Have a life. All right?

During these breaks, I would say from the standpoint getting back to the idea of character animation. I think it's great to, now that you know a little bit about the art form, you can now during your breaks, the break you take now and the breaks you take in the future, or just when you're off doing other things. You can now start to absorb things with an eye towards character animation, in a way that I imagine you couldn't really before. But now that you understand some of the underlying structures, and some of the underlying principles and ideas, you can now start to look around you and absorb different things in ways that will help feed your work as a character animator.

For example, just to begin with, you can start turning a more critical eye towards the character animation that you see. Games, animated movies, series, what's looking good, what's looking bad, or should I say appropriate or not appropriate. Why does the animation in one video game feel better than the animation in another? What's making it feel stronger or have more weight or less weight? Where do you see performance, and how is that performance rendered? How did that animator think about that performance.

You can start to do that now that you understand a little more about this kind of work. So turn a critical eye to all of that. It's fun, and it starts to get you acquainted with the range of work that's out there, the range of styles and the range of techniques. And you'll see things that'll surprise you. Like oh I'd never thought of jumping right from that drawing to this drawing, but look at that. He made that work. And you can start to see the tricks that animators employ.

Another great thing you can do, that unfortunately I personally don't do enough, because I'm not a real big sports person. But it's 100% true that sports are a great way to analyze really extreme, exaggerated human motion. You can really learn a lot about weight and gravity and forces at work by watching sports. Especially because of the liberal use of slow-motion. Sporting events have lots of slow-motion footage where you can really analyze things that are happening, and it's a great way to learn. And it's a great way to kind of build ideas of extreme motion.

I would totally recommend, and again, I have to admit this is one of those things I would say, do as I say, not as I do. Because I'm not a real big sports person, but I know it would be good for me, to sit and watch sporting events with a sketchbook. So if you like sports, grab your sketchbook during your next sporting event. And when you're just kind of in between pizzas or whatever, sketch out some poses. When they're doing that slow-motion, try to do some really fast gesture drawings to kind of get a sense of how those forces are moving the bodies, and how the bodies are propelling themselves and all that kind of stuff. A lot to be learned there. So it's a great piece of advice that I've heard from more than one animator. So I think it's definitely a good one to pass along.

The other thing you want to do is pay attention to live action actors in movies and TV and theater. Start paying attention to performance, particularly actors that are known for their physical performances, which tends to translate very well to the more exaggerated movement of animation. But analyzing great performances by great actors is absolutely valuable to the character animator. It really cannot be overstressed as we've said right from the beginning. We're trying to create a performance. We're creating a performance through a puppet or a drawn figure, but it is still a performance. 

So focusing on the art of acting, theater, film, television acting. Focusing on those art forms is critical, and I'm a big fan of movies. I'm a big fan of actors and acting, and I used to act when I was in high school. And I urge you, I expect many of you, if you're involved anywhere in this industry, you have some interest in the entertainment industry. So I imagine most of you are fans of stuff, TVs and movies and stuff like that.

Watch your favorite actor. You know, how does Bryan Cranston make Walter White live and breath? How does he show what he's feeling in his shoulders? How do you know when Walter is about to blow? Those slow burns when you see him start to get crazy. How does Bryan do that? Bryan is a remarkable actor on every level, and you can learn a lot from analyzing that kind of performance. Say you have a villain that you have to animate. Find a great villain and read what do they do? What makes them frightening? All of those things will really, really help you.

So I would definitely put that on my list, and hey, it's something you're going to do anyway. You're going to watch TV. You're going to watch movies. Once again, grab your sketchbook. Sketch some facial expressions or some body postures. How does a character show that shift when they learn a tragic news? What happens in the shoulders, in the body, in the head? All of those things are just super valuable.

Of course, another thing you can do during your break is instead of animating, you can read books about animation. We recommend it a bunch to you, and that's also a great way to learn when you're in between work. Some of them are not super great like beginning to end readers, but a lot of them are great for just kind of relaxing and flipping through. You know sit on the couch, just flip through. Maybe have your sketchbook with you. Take a few notes. Note a few things that you might try later on.

The Illusion of Life, one of the things that's nice about it, is it actually does really hold up to a read from the beginning to the end. It actually functions as a story, because it's kind of the history of the studio. And it just weaves in what they learned about animation in and around that. But that's definitely one you can really sit down and read. Many of the others are more like reference books, but flipping through them, thinking about them, reading through the sections, taking notes just in a casual way, you'll absorb things and learn things and get ideas that you might want to try when you get back to work.

I would also recommend studying the kind of wider world of character animation. We've been focusing entirely on movement. How to get the performance. How to get the movement and the performance. But obviously, character animation as a big topic, encompasses a lot of other issues. Story development, story boarding, character design, rigging, all of those things are areas that you can look at and study and will help make your work better.

Even if you're only ever going to do the animation part of it, having an understanding of what the story people are doing, have an understanding of character design, having an understanding of rigging. All of those things will help make you a better animator. It's always good to understand the total pipeline. And many of you are going to be working in smaller studios or trying to create your own productions. And you need to know that entire pipeline. So those are other areas that you can study and look at and practice and work on when you're not actually animating.

Then the last thing that you might want to think about. It's kind of a big ... Well I shouldn't say maybe the last thing, but one of the last things is kind of a big topic which is drawing. Now I know that some of you taking this course may have had more of a graphic design background, rather than a sort of a traditional art background. And you may not all have very, very strong skills in life and figure drawing.

Life and figure drawing are kind of at the beating heart of character animation to a certain degree, because an understanding of not only anatomy and how to represent the figure, but also understanding movement and gesture, expression through the figure, all come from studying life and figure drawing. And many animators, character animators will tell you that the better you know how to draw, especially draw the figure, the better character animator you're going to be regardless of what tool you eventually use.

Now, I think in the world that we are drifting into with 2D puppetry that is a little bit more like puppetry in the old-fashioned traditional sense. It is not 100% necessary to have super high level drawing skills. You can hire a character designer to draw you a character, and you can hire someone to rig it even. And you can just make it move. The person designing your character probably should have some figure drawing ability, but even then it's not necessarily 100% vital that you be really good at drawing realistic human figures. You can draw a very stylized unrealistic figure and rig it up and animate it.

So I certainly would never say this is something that is 100% absolutely required. But I will say this, learning how to draw better, in particular learning how to draw the figure better, will undoubtedly make you a better character animator. There's just no other way to say that. You will get better at it. It's particularly in 2D. Particularly in the world of 2D.

If you have a good understanding of figure drawing, particularly gesture drawing, and a good foundational understanding of human and animal anatomy and physiology. All of those things will just plain make you a better character animator. There's no way around it. Your poses will be better. Your silhouettes will be better. They'll be more expressive poses. You'll get to your poses quicker. You'll understand how to break down the movement more quickly. You'll be able to thumbnail faster. So when you're planning your animation, because you can draw the figure more quickly, you'll be able to bang those thumbnails in a fraction of the time, if you don't know how to draw the figure that well. So it just goes on and on and on. There's really no replacement for it.

I would certainly say, if you have the time, if you have the resources, if you have the inclination, and you really want to get serious about character animation. I would take drawing classes, or just if you've already had a lot of drawing classes, draw a lot. Keep your sketchbook with you. Do a lot of café drawing or out of the studio drawing. Draw people at the bus stop, at the café, at the mall, at the sporting event. Keep your sketchbook with you. Think about gesture. Think about expression through the body. The old man waiting for the bus, how can you tell that he's lonely. How can you tell the eight year-old at the bus needs to pee? Sketch it out. Figure it out. That'll become a little piece, a little tool in your toolbox when you need to animate somebody who's lonely or somebody who needs to pee.

So learning how to draw and/or doing a lot of drawing that focuses on the figure, the gesture, is vitally important. And I would certainly say take drawing classes, join a figure-drawing co-op. There are figure drawing co-ops in most cities and towns with a decent size school or a decent size art scene. You can almost always find a figure-drawing co-op. And all of that will help you. I just can't stress it enough. So if you already draw the figure, draw it more. If you've never really drawn the figure, I would take some classes and start learning. That'd be a great, great asset to you as a character animator.

Then this really would be the last thing. I think the last thing would be and again, this would be for someone who really wants to get serious about character animation. Take acting classes. Take dance classes. Take movement classes. Learn from professionals who understand how to position the body towards an audience. That's staging guys. That's creating a good silhouette and staging, right? Who understand how to express emotions and forces through the body.

All of those things, once again, will make you a better character animator. So if drawing is not your thing, maybe try some acting. Plus it would be fun. I would honestly do more of that if I had more time myself. If you have the time, and you have the resources, take an expressive movement class at your local community college. You'd probably get so much fun and enjoyment out of it, and you would come back to your animation refreshed with new ideas and new experiences to feed your work. So I think all of that would be great, great stuff to do.

Now as we said, it's good to take breaks. It's good to relax, and it's good to have some new experiences. But you don't want to take too long a break, particularly from character animation. And I know for many of you, you're goal I expect for this course, was simply to add character to your tool kit as a motion designer. Some of you may really be looking at this as something more serious that you want to do for the rest of your career.

Either way, I would say don't stay away from it for too long. If you just want it to be a tool in your toolkit, and you just want to be able to do it if a client needs it, I would still put it into practice with some regularity. Maybe not as much as someone who really wants to make this their central focus. But I still wouldn't leave it be for very long.

Character animation is one of those things. It's a set of muscles that you have to exercise. If you don't, if you leave it be for too long, you will get rusty. And I speak from experience because I've recently been teaching and rigging a lot more than I've been animating, and it definitely ... I feel it, when I go to animate. I feel a little slower. I feel like I have to think things through a little more. Not everything I do hits quite right away like it does when I'm really firing on all cylinders. So you gotta keep exercising those muscles.

Practice, practice, practice. There's no other way to get good at character animation except to do lots of it. Practice with character animation, you can't even say that practice makes perfect, because character animation is one of those things that I don't think perfect exists. I think you'll get better at it until you die, which is awesome. I think that's a great thing. You can look at it in a negative way, but I prefer to look at it as a positive. There's always something to learn. There's always something new to try in character animation.

So I would say, practice makes competent. First, practice will make you competent. And then later, practice will make you good. And then you'll keep getting better until you're a withered old thing still cranking out character animation. But again, that's I think the beauty of this art form. It's really an art form with a continuing path of exploration, and a continuing path of learning and growth. And that's really a beautiful thing I think. It's something that you truly can dedicate your life to if you choose to. Doing just little bits here and there, even if you don't have time to do it all the time, will keep you from getting rusty. And it's really important to just do a little bit here and there.

And this brings up another topic, which is that you now have added this new skill, this ability to handle a little bit of character animation. And you want to be able to advertise this to your clients. So you're going to need character work on your reel besides the work you've created for this class in order to attract some attention to this new skill that you've acquired. Now that, to me, seems like a win-win because I just got done telling you that you need to keep practicing, and you need to exercise.

First of all, you have a lot to learn still. You don't know everything yet. Have a lot to learn, and you need to keep practicing to keep those muscles in shape and keep from getting rusty. And you need more work on your reel. So what I would recommend is giving yourself some little assignments. A great thing to do is for one thing, lots more walk cycles. Oh man, you can never hurt to do more walk cycles. Try doing more expressive walk cycles. Try doing crazy ones, funny one, wounded ones, sad ones, happy ones, so many varieties. Try fat characters, thin characters, tall ones, short ones. You can honestly do walk cycles for the rest of your life and never do all of the walk cycles.

And we looked at the great artist who did a walk cycle a week for four months or something like that. Set yourself a goal like that. Say I'm going to do a walk cycle every month. Or I'm going to do a walk cycle every week, or something like that. Post them to your blog. It'd be a great way to attract attention to your website or your blog, so that would be a great, fun, easy task.

The other thing is to do more kind of basic animation exercises. Heavy lifts are a great one. We didn't do that in this class, but a heavy lift is a classic slightly more intermediate, I would say, animation exercise where you animate your character lifting a heavy weight. And there's lots of examples of this online. You can find lots of reference for it, because it's such a classic exercise. You can do more runs. You can do different kinds of throws.

You can do modifications of the exercises we did in our class. Or redo an exercise that you know you didn't really get right. Try it again. Just run through it again. Or try it with a new character. Try developing your own character, and auto-rig it with [do-ick 00:25:38] and try animating your own character doing one of the exercises from our class.

The other great thing you can do is to set yourself like a real job task like say a title sequence, or a little short, like a little quick gag short. Just 5-10 seconds or something. Or if you're really ambitious, you can try doing a longer short. If you actually want to go for something that's a couple of minutes long, and maybe want to try to get into some film festivals or get some notice for it on Vimeo. That's another possibility as well.

If you want to dive in a little deeper, consider collaborating with other animators or with a comic artist that you love or something like that. Look for a nonprofit organization that might love to have a PSA or an info-video done for them for free and use it as an opportunity to practice you're character animation in a low-pressure situation.

Remember also, that once you have a rigged puppet like the kind we've been using, one of the things that's really nice about it is once you've done the hard work of rigging it, the character can be used indefinitely. So you can also consider something like a web series, and that's another thing you could consider for a nonprofit organization for example. Like let's say you get with a company that deals with safety. You could do a series of safety videos aimed at kids using a simple rigged puppet character. That kind of a thing.

So all of those would give you opportunities to practice, to keep yourself from getting rusty, and to build your reel and start to get your work out there and start to attract more interest in your work as a character animator.

And that brings us to maybe the last little topic, which is what do I do with this reel once I build it? Once I have some character on my reel, what am I going to do with it? Well the first case is one of the great things that you probably already know about demo reels is that when you have a new one, and you've updated your reel, it's a chance to make some noise. To post some tweets and Instagram posts or Tumblr, and say, "Hey everybody, I got a new demo reel. Come to my website." It's a great way to drive traffic to your website. It's also a great way to recontact companies and clients that you have worked with before or contacted before, and say, "Hey I got some new stuff."

So the first thing I would do is just send it out to all of the people that you already know. Reconnect. You never know what company is going to be thrown the curve ball of a character piece. It happens. A lot of times, I've gotten contacted by companies that are a little desperate, because suddenly they have client that wants something character based, and they don't know how to do it. So recontacting a company you worked for before and saying, "Hey by the way, if this ever comes up I can do this for you now," is a great way to kind of reconnect, remind people where you are, and also show that you're developing as an artist and growing as an artist, which is awesome.

And for those of you who are kind of looking at this as just as a way to round out your skills as a motion designer, this is going to make you really attractive even to general motion design companies. If you can show them that you can do both good, basic, general motion graphic and motion design work, but you can also handle character. They're going to see you as a very attractive person, because you can handle almost anything. And you can do that character stuff when it comes in, but you also handle their bread and butter stuff too. So you want to think about that in the way you structure your reel, and the types of studios you're contacting.

But of course also when you have new work on your reel, and particularly if you're trying to move into the area of 2D character animation, you're going to want to contact some new companies and some new people. There's several motion design studios that are famous for character or at least have a healthy amount of character work on their reel. And you can contact them certainly in particular, and try to get some attention there.

You may also want to look for 2D series producers like Shadow Machine. Series producers would definitely be attracted to someone that had experience doing 2D character, even if you're not using the particular software package they're using. My guess is they're going to be attracted to good animators first, and what software you're using second. I certainly would.

You also want to look at 2D game companies. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of indie game companies that do almost entirely 2D. It's very common, so that's another place you can look to kind of hock your wares, and let people know that you're available.

Another thing that you may not have considered that this particular skill puts you in good shape for, is in animatic and pre-visualization. Pre-vis development is huge, and there's a lot of great animatic studios out there that work with storyboard artists. And they need people who understand very basic, very simple, character animation. It's done to a greater/lesser degree depending on the budget and the type of project it is, but it's definitely an area where you may want to make some contacts, because there is a decent amount work in that area animating characters in 2D hand-drawn animatics.

And many of them use After Affects, Toon Boom, the same exact kinds of structures and rigs that we have been using in this class. So it would be something that would feel pretty familiar to you pretty quickly. So that's another great place to look for a place to show off the new skills that you've acquired.

I really hope you've gotten a lot out of this class. I hope that you do feel like you've gained some new skills. Keep in mind you do have a lot more to learn, but we've hopefully put you on a good, solid foundation to move forward and continue to grow as a character animator.