Sunday, October 9, 2011

Meeting Overview, 10/07/11

Hello all! Here is the meeting overview for last Friday:

- We're going to be advertising a bit more for the Animation Student Collective. Keep an eye out for new posters and don't forget to mention the ASC in your classes! :)

- We'll definitely be investigating the T-shirts. We had a unanimous vote in favour of them! :) For now, start thinking about/designing some concepts for the shirts, and us leaders will be looking into some logistics with the faculty. We may have a T-shirt design contest with a prize!

- The library has just ordered in a series of DVDs called "Storyboard Secrets." They are on reserve in the library, and you can watch them there. This is a fantastic resource and collection of tutorials, so if this is something that interests you, we highly recommend it!

- Next week (10/14/11) we will be having a movie night! We had a vote, and we'll be watching The Illusionist. The Illusionist is a French 2D animated film by Sylvain Chomet.

- Finally, we had quite a long and informative discussion about different facets and careers within the animation industry. It was a great discussion! Here are some of the things we talked about, and some of the videos we watched.

Blue Sky Studios has a great list and explanation, with images, of the animation pipeline. Check it out here! It's described here for 3D animation, but a lot of the aspects easily transition to 2D.

Storyboard Artists
- have a close relationship with the director
- create animatics (moving storyboards) to develop timing
- think of the differences between storyboarding for live action film, and storyboarding for animation: storyboards in film are often more vague and gestural. Just the basics are blocked out. In animation, every detail must be planned in advance, because you can't easily "reshoot."
- must embrace changes! storyboards go through MANY revisions.


Colour Scripting
- must be proficient in colour theory and colour relationships
- Lou Romano
Kuler
- Colour Lovers
Colour Scheme Designer
Download: Colour Cop

Visual Development
- designing characters, props, environments, etc.
- in film, comic books, and video games, it can be referred to as concept art
- one of the hardest animation careers to get into, because of demand
- Brittney Lee
- Rad Sechrist - how to
- Character Design Blog


Effects
- are used in both 2D and 3D animation
- in 2D, much more fluid. in 3D, effects are mostly particle based, so some programming knowledge may be necessary.
- Ryan Woodward


Modeling
- constructing objects, characters, environments, etc, within a 3D environment.
- wireframe
- it's IMPORTANT to have clean geometry and good topological flow with the lowest possible poly count
- be aware of how it will rig, and if it will move well
- ZBrush vs Maya vs other programs
- Mike Altman
- Liz Paradis


Rigging
- setting up a skeleton for animation
- the best riggers make their rigs as foolproof as possible
- hierarchy is very important as is organization (it needs to be easy to understand)
- Victor Vinyals


Materials
-  knowing both textures and shaders
- shaders simulate real world lighting conditions
- be aware of shader network programming
- Alex Alvarado


Layout
- decide where things GO in interior and exterior shots
- being aware of where to leave open space for characters to act - no clutter
- think: someone had to lay out all the objects and things in Andy's Room in Toy Story


Animation
-  2D is NOT dead; it is just being used in different ways. media is ever changing.
- there are a lot more combinations now of 2D and 3D used in the same piece, and this can be really effective
- Legend of the BoneKnapper
- "2D is just the old and grouchy man who yells at that kid 3D for throwing baseballs on his lawn." - Rico Jackson ;)


This is, of course, not a complete list of all the possible careers within the enormous field that is animation. We ran out of time last Friday, but we'll definitely be talking about this more in the future! We hope it was informative. :)

See you on Friday! Bring comfy clothes and snacks and prepare for The Illusionist!

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