Animators Always Start With a Story

Animators are story tellers. Every animation should have an idea behind it, one that tells a story.

Junior animators focus on learning technique - and technique is very important. But it is also important to think carefully about the story behind your shot.

Who is your character, and why are they doing what they are doing?  What is the scene about? What do they want, and what do they fear?  These things are important because if your shots forms part of an interesting story, it will be much more interesting to watch.

Dream On, Silly Dreamer

Dream On Silly Dreamer is a film that should be watched by anyone interested in the history of the Disney Studio. Like "Waking Sleeping Beauty", the film that closed out this year's CTN Expo, it chronicles the rise - and eventual fall - of 2D animation in the 1980s and 1990s.  The story is told through interviews with the artists involved, including Disney legends such as Andreas Deja, the creator of Disney characters such as Scar (Lion King) and Jafar (Aladdin).

Royce Wesley and the Pixar Workflow

Incredibles 2

Pixar animator Royce Wesley was in London recently, talking about his experience working on Incredibles 2, and also explaining his own personal animation workflow.

Royce is an experienced character animator whose animation credits include Brave, Coco, Robots and Inside Out. He visited us in London to mentor our animation students and help make sure we are hitting the highest levels of quality in character animation.

Understanding how to plan your work is one of the key parts of the animator's skill set. Every animator has their own unique approach, and it's important to develop a workflow that you can rely on to get your shots approved without too much stress.

Blue Zoo and Real Time Rendering with Unreal

Blue Zoo's Tom Box at BlueGFX Expo

Blue Zoo's Tom Box explained the Blue "real-time animation pipeline" at the recent BlueGFX Expo in London, exploring new ways to speed up the animation process.

Tom described Blue Zoo as a studio that, since its inception, has "refused to accept industry standards", and has forged its own path in the industry.

Recently Blue Zoo have been pioneering the use of real-time rendering using Unreal Engine - trying to find ways to make the production process faster and more efficient. 

Tribute to Richard Williams on Saturday

CTN Expo in Burbank, Los Angeles, is hosting a tribute to my father, the animator Richard Williams on Saturday November 23rd.

The tribute is titled "Life is on Ones", and the panel is being hosted by my old friend and colleague Tom Sito, who is an animator, director and professor - as well as the author of many books on animation. 

How to Get Ahead in Animation - Tonight

Tonight in London the Royal Television Society (RTS) are hosting a free event titled "How To Get Ahead in Animation".

A panel of animators will discuss the wide variety of options open to those with a passion for animation.

Members of the panel during this event will share stories of their careers, the highs points (and the low points) and how to land that crucial first job in the industry.  To book your free place visit https://rts.org.uk/event/how-get-ahead-animation for more details.

Stratostorm Studios in London Tomorrow Night

Tomorrow night in London the founders of Stratostorm are making a presentation about the creation of their award-winning animation company.

The event takes place at Escape Studios, and is completely free. As always, we recommend our students attend events like this one; it is a great opportunity to find out how the industry works and also develop industry contacts.

Secrets of the Spider-Verse at VIEW

Peter Ramsay at VIEW: Into the Spider-Verse

One of the main highlights of the recent VIEW conference in Turin, Italy, was a talk by Peter Ramsey, co-director of Spiderman – Into The Spider-Verse.

Ramsay's talk was sub-titled “What Story are You Telling?”, and he showed the audience how the answer to that question informed every frame and every pixel of the Oscar and BAFTA winning movie.

Spiderman – Into The Spider-Verse re-invented the Spiderman franchise, and achieved a unique comic book-style look for the world of Spiderman.  How did they do it?

Walks, Character Walks, and the ZigZag Walk

ZigZag walk from The Thief & The Cobbler

This month our students studying on our online animation masters' degree are tackling the first animation module DA701 - locomotion and mechanics, in which they must master motion cycles such as walks and runs.

Learning to animate a successful walk cycle is one of the fundamental skills any animator must master, in much the same way that a musician must learn to play scales on a piano. 

One of the most challenging jobs I had to do on The Thief and The Cobbler was to animate the Zig Zag walk, a complex piece of animation that introduced the villainous grand vizier.

Adobe Premiere For Animators

At some point every animator needs to learn the basics of video editing.  Premiere Pro, made by Adobe,  comes bundled as part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Animators need Adobe Premiere mainly to cut (and re-cut) their demo reels and - of course - to make short film projects.

Premiere is also needed to create movie files from a batch render of images. Let's say you are lighting and rendering your scene with Arnold, the ray tracer that is currently bundled with Maya. Arnold will not render out a movie file (such as a avi or mov) directly; instead, you must render still images in a sequence.  To turn those still images into a movie file, you need Premiere (or some other editing software). Here is how to do it.

Submit Your Film Idea to Cartoon Movie

Our student animators at Bucks New Uni are film-makers as well as animators, and many are developing their own ideas for original films and TV Series.

Of course, financing idea projects isn't easy, but the annual Cartoon Movie event in France is a good place to begin. The deadline to submit your project to Cartoon Movie is 20 November.

El Suliman on The Making of The Lion King

El Suliman

Recently MPC lead animator El Suliman was in London talking about his work on the Disney blockbuster "The Lion King".

El was speaking at Escape Studios, at one of their regular "Evening With" events.  El Suliman was an animation lead on The Lion King, and he animated many of the key shots on the film.

El explained how the animators approached the animation on this hugely complex and ground-breaking movie, which raises the bar for creature animation. 

Why Animators Need to Be on LinkedIn

Tiffany Feeny, Ted Ty, Alex Williams, Jan-Bart Van Beek

How do animation graduates break into the industry? At this week's VIEW conference in Turin I was invited onto a recruitment panel hosted by New York's School of Visual Arts, hosted by SVA's Director of Career Development Angie Wojak.

Also on the panel was the recruiter Tiffany Feeney of Talent Outpost, an independent recruitment agency based in Switzerland.

Tiffany's big message to recent graduates looking for work?  "Be on Linkedin".