Animation Tips & Tricks VOLUME II - 2009 EDITION BY: AnimationMentor.com Founders and Mentors AnimationMentor.com Cofounders SHAWN KELLY CARLOS BAENA with features by AnimationMentor.com Mentors KEITH SINTAY AARON GILMAN and special guest WAYNE GILBERT FOREWORD What’s your favorite hobby? Your favorite past-time? What’s your favorite thing to sit around with your friends and talk about? For me, it’s animation. I love doing it, I love seeing it, I love learning more about it, and I love talking about it. Seeing something brought to life is always a magical experience for me, regardless of whether or not I happened to be involved in the process. So, the idea that someone out there might be interested in my thoughts on this stuff is absolutely surreal, because I’m just doing what I love, and talking about my favorite subject, and against all odds, you keep coming back for more! No matter how much time I spend (waste?) talking about fried chicken, Bacardi Anejo, or whatever other random thing pops into my mind, you still haven’t abandoned me, and for that I owe you a great big thank you!! This year was such a fun year for Animation Mentor’s newsletter and our Tips & Tricks blog and Carlos Baena’s blog. All of the content in this book originated in one of those spots, and the most exciting difference in this book over last year’s book is that we have a bunch of amazing guest writers! Our awesome contributors include Aaron Gilman, Keith Sintay, Wayne Gilbert, and Carlos Baena. Aaron and Keith are animators and Animation Mentor mentors extraordinaire. Wayne is my mentor and the reason why I am an animator at ILM. And Carlos and is not only one of the most talented animators I know, but cofounder of Animation Mentor and one of my closest friends. So fun to get to collaborate with these guys! It’s been such a cool experience for me (and you, I’m sure!) to get to hear the thoughts and tips of such an impressive cast of animators who have been contributing throughout the year. It’s been really humbling and fun to be a part of such a knowledgeable group, and all of us at Animation Mentor are so thankful to these animators who have been so generous in sharing their golden nuggets of animation wisdom with us! The other big change between this year’s book and last year’s book is that the blog really created more of a dialogue, and allowed us to more directly answer reader-submitted questions and thoughts. For me, this elevated the whole idea to a new level, and I just wanted to give a quick thank you to all the people out there who have been writing comments on the blog and sending in their questions to the newsletter! You guys rock!! This ebook literally wouldn’t exist without you guys. And last but not least, I just want to give a big thank you to the greatest school staff the planet has ever seen, and especially Eunice Park and Michael Dauz for keeping the blog and newsletter not only up and running, but better every day! So, what follows is our second official collection of animation articles written by a bunch of people who are probably a little too passionate about this stuff for our own good. Hope you have as much fun reading it as we had writing it! Be sure to swing by the blog and say hello! Shawn :) AUTHOR BIOS SHAWN KELLY Cofounder of AnimationMentor.com Animator at Industrial Light & Magic http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com Shawn Kelly realized his dream to animate films with the help of three mentors who took a personal interest in his career. Convinced that animation lovers everywhere should have the same opportunity, he cofounded AnimationMentor.com, an online animation school with student/mentor relationships at its core. Kelly works with Bobby Beck, AnimationMentor.com’s CEO and President, and cofounder Carlos Baena to help define and shape the school’s overall direction. Kelly balances his Animation Mentor role with his work as a senior animator at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in San Rafael, Calif. Born in Santa Rosa, Calif., and raised in Petaluma, Kelly set his sights on working at ILM at age five when the movieStar Wars hit the big screen. Under the tutelage of animators Bill Hennes and John Root, he studied drawing and computer software throughout high school, attended community college, and Academy of Art University in San Francisco. A summer internship at ILM introduced Kelly to another influential mentor, animation director Wayne Gilbert. It was through Gilbert that Kelly realized that he wasn’t learning what he needed at school. Kelly left the academy in 1996 for a job as a character animator at former video game and educational company Presage Software, but continued his studies with Gilbert twice a week. In 1998, Kelly fulfilled his lifelong dream and landed a job at ILM. Since that time, he has worked on numerous films including Day After Tomorrow, where he was on the team that animated the wolves; War of the Worlds, for which he animated tripods and probes; and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, where he helped develop and animate the vulture droids and animated Yoda in a pivotal sword fight. Kelly worked as a Lead Animator on Transformers, and his additional credits include The Incredible Hulk, Star Wars: Episode 2 – Attack of the Clones, and AI: Artificial Intelligence. He just completed work on Indiana Jones 4, and is currently a Lead Animator on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Kelly received the 2007 award for the ‘Best Single Visual Effect of the Year’ by the Visual Effects Society (VES), an organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and the application of visual effects. Kelly’s winning effect was for the desert highway sequence of Transformers, in which Bonecrusher skates through traffic, destroys a bus, and fights Optimus Prime. Kelly has developed curriculum and taught at the Academy of Art University and was on the team that earned the 2000 CLIO award for Best Computer Animation for a Pepsi/Star Wars Alien campaign. Kelly currently lives in San Anselmo, Calif., where he reads a lot -- especially comics – and writes short films. CARLOS BAENA Cofounder of AnimationMentor.com Animator at Pixar Animation Studios http://www.carlosbaena.com Carlos Baena knew he wanted to be an animator after watching two films:Toy Story and The Nightmare Before Christmas. He was moved by the storytelling, the characters, and the animation. After Baena began studying animation, he experienced a deeper level of storytelling that he wanted to share with others. As a cofounder of the online school AnimationMentor.com, Baena is helping to bring animation education to students around the world, inspiring them to make films. Baena works with fellow cofounders, Bobby Beck, AnimationMentor.com’s CEO and President, and Shawn Kelly to define and shape the school’s overall direction. Baena balances his cofounder responsibilities with his full-time animator job at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. Born on the Canary Islands and raised in Madrid, Baena came to the United States to attend the University of San Francisco and the Academy of Art University. Upon graduation in June 1998, he landed a job animating commercials at Will Vinton Studios in Portland, Oregon. Four months later, he returned to San Francisco to work on spots and short films at Click 3X and WildBrain, Inc. Baena continued to hone his craft, doing character animation tests and wearing out his VCR’s slowmo toggle. The imagery he created helped him secure a position at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in March 2001. At ILM, Baena worked as an animator on Jurassic Park 3, Men in Black 2, and Star Wars: Episode 2-Attack of the Clones. Captivated by fantasy and comedy, Baena left ILM for Pixar in 2002 where he has worked on the filmsFinding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Ratatouille, the short filmBoundin’ , and Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E. In Cars, Baena animated several scenes with the two Italian cars Guido and Luigi (two of the characters that were the most fun for him to animate) and received a 2007 Annie Award nomination for Best Character Animation for his work. Baena’s current projects at Pixar include Toy Story 3, which is scheduled for release in 2010. Baena currently lives in San Francisco, Calif., where he spends his leisure time studying and making short films, composing music, skateboarding, and perfecting his animation craft. WAYNE GILBERT Animation Director Writer http://www.anamie.com Wayne Gilbert graduated from Sheridan College in the mid-1970s. He started work at a small studio on a television special titled Witch’s Night Out, then on to Nelvana where he animated and/or illustrated backgrounds on five more TV specials, a pile of commercials and was the background department head on the feature film Rock and Rule. After leaving the studio life to freelance he taught and coordinated the Classical Animation Program at Sheridan College. While teaching he made two short films – Bottoms Up and Traffic Jam, which screened at Annecy Animation Festival in France. In1996 he was recruited to help set up the Walt Disney Canada studio in Toronto then headed to Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) where he worked for seven years and transitioned to CG animation and completed two more short films – CPU and the award winning Let GO. Gilbert returned to Canada in 2005 to work as senior animation director at Electronic Arts Black Box on the award-winning new IP ‘Skate.’ While at ILM, Disney and EA his responsibilities included designing and delivering professional development classes for animators.