As a video game "combat animator" I have often had ridiculous, violent tasks thrown my way: The laughable fatalities in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, super moves in X-Men: Next Dimension, and even an axe lodged in a woman's skull in Gun. During God of War III I animated a sequence that involved our protagonist, Kratos, violently ripping the head off of the sun god, Helios, with his bare hands. It will likely be the most talked about thing from my entire career as a game developer.
I've been an animator for a long time now and it seems that what I'm best at is violence. I'm not a violent person but when people ask what I do I jokingly tell them that I make people hurt each other. This is true to some extent but what I really do is help shape characters within a universe.
While I was not Kratos' main animator I did get to make him kill some of his enemies. Within these "context sensitive moves" Kratos still moves as Kratos. He still has the same rules for my cs moves that he has when our lead, Bruno, works on navigation animations or attacks. For the most part I always tried to keep Kratos true to form but the Helios head rip, while admittedly over the top, is flirting with being comical and outside the nature of Kratos. It's almost spectacle just for the sake of it, which I would have liked to change. At the very least it would have been nice to show that Helios' sight does, in fact, reveal hidden things beforehand but, hey, I ain't a designer.
The simple idea that there is a rule set for a character's movement is so important to telling a story using action without dialogue that I often have to wonder if other developers take this philosophy to heart. Since "narrative" seems to be the latest game developer catchphrase, let's call this "Corporeal Narration." It's wildly apparent in most 2d and 3d feature films that personality through motion is important but it seems as if the majority of games today are lacking this quality. This is becoming more and more evident with the rise of "plug and play" animations that have very little to do with personality and more to do with producers thinking mocap expedites animation time.
I am wary of writing about Ico because of how many others have done it before and done it better than I can but it has brilliant corporeal narrative. Ico also illustrates just how important character performance is. Many games these days use motion capture with such generic performances that it's, honestly, a little disheartening. Motion capture actors often over-emote, use their hands too much, and generally exaggerate their movements to excess, all the while managing to escape any sense of the character they are portraying. Ironically, motion capture excels at recreating exactly the opposite of what many actors do when put in a suit. All of the subtleties of motion as it relates to personality and character are typically unexplored. Admittedly, this even occurred in some of GOW III's cut scenes(I never want to see Kratos point at anything ever again).
Poor mocap performance exists in nearly every title that uses it but it's not the technology's fault; It's the actor's and it's also the director's. Sometimes it's the animator. Sometimes it's even production. A character may not be defined when mocap shoots are scheduled to happen. Sometimes there isn't even concept art for the actor to reference. Many things can limit a character's representation but poor performance results in watered down, generic character action.
My original thought for this post was to express how having to animate Kratos killing made me think about him as a character, how he behaves and how he moves, how he always travels directly towards his goal. In everything I worked on I tried to follow the rules of who he is and how that applies to motion. Even though I was required to break the rules by designers I stuck as close to them as I could. That same treatment should be true for every animator for any character. Everything a character does stems from a unique individual place, with motivations and decisions driven by their personality. Remember that characters are always performing, even during inaction.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Gesture central
Here's something every animator could use:
http://www.pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html
Great site devoted to helping with gesture drawings. Not only humans, either.
http://www.pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html
Great site devoted to helping with gesture drawings. Not only humans, either.
Human Planet
Can't recommend this series enough to animators, designers, and artists. Cheap as hell on Amazon right now, too.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Life Design
Before I became an animator I was an indecisive, floundering community college nerd. Most of my classes had to do with art or the understanding of life. I took many painting, design, anthropology, philosophy, writing, and cinema courses. Of all the classes I took the one that taught me the most, and the one I was clearly most interested in, was life drawing.
Life drawing showed me how people are really built underneath the skin. It taught me the human form, motion, anatomy, weight, balance, posture, gesture, silhouette, shadow and even timing: Everything an animator needs to know. It taught me that walking is really just falling forward.
Seeing the body in unique poses and having to get them quickly down on paper leads your brain to an intense, speedy study of function determining form and the inherent necessities that foster both. Life drawing is a study of not only motion and shape but of design as well.
This doesn't happen overnight. I was a quick study and a standout with some natural drawing ability but to really understand the human form it took years. Hell, I'm still learning. The forms that make up a creature's body tell the history of its' functional necessities and beneficial adaptations. This isn't a new idea but one that I feel most animators don't fully understand the weight of. That's true of many character and concept artists as well. It's often said that in order to break rules you have to first understand them and this is the case with writing, animation, design and many other disciplines. This all starts with learning the rules.
In my career I've had to animate some of the most ridiculous designs I've ever seen. I've resisted, struggled, fought against, overcome and conquered many of them. At the end of the day, yes, you can make good animation with poor character design. You can even make something completely unbelievable look good. However, as someone who is close to last in the pipeline of a typical game character, animators should fight against having to sacrifice their work and fight early on. It's o.k. to disagree with a character design if it doesn't make sense. It's o.k. to question whether or not this character is even able to walk, eat, sleep, or let alone shit. This is a character you have to make move and live and breathe. The harder someone else makes it to do that, the harder your job becomes. Then again, it's only o.k. to disagree if you know what you're talking about.
I've been spoiled. I have worked with some of the best designers in gaming today and learned more in a few years than I ever would have on my own. Combining their knowledge of game language and my own interest in animal biology and natural design, I've succumbed to a place where the, "no player will care," attitude isn't good enough. If I care, someone somewhere else might, and that is what isn't good enough.
I've worked with many artists who were truly 3D born. That is to say that they had no 2D background. They had no understanding of the fundamentals of drawing, draftsmanship, or even structural understanding. They think they learned art because they've learned a 3D package. They may know how to sculpt but don't understand anatomy. They may know how to make a mesh but don't know the musculature underneath. They might even think they can animate because they made a ball bounce "properly." This is more common than you'd think. Possibly because, "no player will care."
Once there is an established paradigm only then can you step away from it. You can expand, reshape, reform and mold new ideas. You can branch out into new ways to use existing locomotion to suit game play purposes. This is the way of the world and it's how creatures change, but without fundamentals as a base you're left with something that is entirely fantasy. Entirely unreal. Entirely alien; Perhaps even alienating.
This is an especially sore point for me because I truly believe the idea that people recognize things firstly through silhouette, secondly through color or detail, and as a tertiary measure, motion. Kids make up monsters on a chair because a lump of clothes can look eerily like a humanoid shape. When a character design doesn't fire on all three cylinders properly (silhouette, color, and motion) it fails. There is, of course, the argument that what is uncertain can add to the effect of uncertainty, unfamiliarity, and eventually fear but that seems like rather lazy design. It's simply alienation through the foreign, which is slightly unrealistic(you too, zombies). Despite American jingoistic tendencies or even in our imaginations, in the real world, the most fearsome things are not foreign. They're in our backyards(See: 28 Days Later; If you think zombies are the most terrifying thing in that film you are horribly mistaken).
I've gotten way off track but while I would like to think that most animators are typically 2d artists in their own right this is surprisingly not the case. Many 3D animators can't draw at all, or at the very least never bothered to succeed at it. Many have never taken a life drawing course, either. I highly recommend it to anyone learning or working in animation, but also to concept artists. Their work extends to every department that comes after it. The more knowledge that trickles down from the basic understanding of animal development, coloration and motion the more it is represented in each subsequent department. I'd even suggest this to designers as well. You drive the purpose behind the motion that encourages a player to play your games. Understanding the basics of movement might not only help us animators, but might also help in your designs.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Hercules.
Here's something I did on God of War III:
Everything in this clip was animated by me except for Kratos' swimming at the end. The Hercules fight was a somewhat frustrating but really fun time during development. I always enjoy animating Kratos and this final beat down on Hercules was one of my favorite things I worked on. It took at least 7 different departments for the whole thing to come together but I think it turned out pretty well all things considered.
I talked about the first pass/final pass mentality but one thing most people don't realize is that the big difference between film animation and game animation is the amount of time spent on a particular sequence. Games require multiple animations that connect together through code, while film is typically multiple shots pieced together with editing. This means that while an animator for a film might be given 2 months for one shot, an animator for games might be given 2 days; Sometimes just 2 hours for a single animation. As a result many game animations aren't as polished as they could be but if the moment is sold well enough and the animation is passable, it's good enough to be in the game. More often than not the animations during the Hercules fight had to be done as fast as I could get them done.
There are still a couple things that really bug me about this sequence, chief among them is the repeated punch Kratos throws while Hercules is pinned down. What ended up in the game was truly a first pass animation that took maybe a half hour to finish. It's only 4 key poses spread across just twenty frames. You can see that as he continues to punch the animation speeds up, which I would have liked to fix with multiple, separate, faster and better animations. Instead, to get temporary animations in the game for design to mess around with, I scaled the original punch's frames to make a slow and fast version and in the end that's what stuck. When the camera dept set up the varying angles on Kratos and Hercules it actually worked better than I thought it would.
There were a few design elements that also needed animated cameras to change. One of these was Kratos sliding down the arena as Hercules lifts it upwards. The camera had to show the arena being tilted and the peril waiting at the end. Kratos tumbles and slides and rolls all the way down the surface until crashing through the arena's rail at the end(which is probably my favorite part). Originally the camera followed closely behind Kratos(a la Uncharted 2's crumbling building)as he slid down the arena and hung suspended above him as he flies off the end. Since there was no art below the arena I couldn't point the camera downwards, and instead had to pan out, cutting at the last second as he breaks through the railing. As a result the camera is way too far out to see what was probably the most polished animation I did for the entire fight. I'm not sure how jarring the cut is to others, or how obvious the height of the fall is(all the way down Mt. Olympus), but for what we had to show I think it worked out.
In the first iteration of design there was a completely different way for Kratos to climb back to the top of the slope but that was scrapped when we realized it would require new code. At the time we were rushed and no one had any real alternatives but I figured we could rely on our normal cs moves so I went ahead and made the gigantic bicycle-kicking jump attack back up to the top. It went in the game but was way too fast for a button prompt so I suggested slowing down the jump towards the apex of its' arc. As soon as the slowdown went in I tweaked the camera and animation to show Kratos' silhouette as strongly as possible, with depth of field for added effect. All of that sold the idea. Seeing that jump in commercials for the game confirmed(at least to me) that it was a solid GOW moment.
Originally the outcome of the fight was much less certain. The little homage to Disney's Tarzan was the original ending, which stayed in the game, but it's definitely less effective/uncertain after having seen Herc's face crushed in, which we added later. The face smash was actually inspired by the movie Irreversible, in which a guy's face is brutally crushed by a fire extinguisher. Again, Hercules' reactions to the repeated punch are another animation that was temporary at one point yet stayed first pass. His lack of movement actually added to his helplessness, making it an even more grisly scene.
One other thing that I think worked really well were Hercules' bare handed cs moves(not shown), which allowed us to get really close with the camera and also show off Kratos doing some cestus punches that look pretty powerful. They also show him rolling back into his fighting stance, looking ready for action.
In any event the Hercules fight was riddled with logistical problems and design issues. What started with one designer and one animator for the first half ended up being passed along to another designer and yet another animator to finish it. Everything got ironed out eventually and I think overall it's a decent (if somewhat tedious) fight. The work we did at the end really helped the sequence feel heroic(if a bit leaning towards gore porn) and probably made the fight more memorable than would have been otherwise.
Everything in this clip was animated by me except for Kratos' swimming at the end. The Hercules fight was a somewhat frustrating but really fun time during development. I always enjoy animating Kratos and this final beat down on Hercules was one of my favorite things I worked on. It took at least 7 different departments for the whole thing to come together but I think it turned out pretty well all things considered.
I talked about the first pass/final pass mentality but one thing most people don't realize is that the big difference between film animation and game animation is the amount of time spent on a particular sequence. Games require multiple animations that connect together through code, while film is typically multiple shots pieced together with editing. This means that while an animator for a film might be given 2 months for one shot, an animator for games might be given 2 days; Sometimes just 2 hours for a single animation. As a result many game animations aren't as polished as they could be but if the moment is sold well enough and the animation is passable, it's good enough to be in the game. More often than not the animations during the Hercules fight had to be done as fast as I could get them done.
There are still a couple things that really bug me about this sequence, chief among them is the repeated punch Kratos throws while Hercules is pinned down. What ended up in the game was truly a first pass animation that took maybe a half hour to finish. It's only 4 key poses spread across just twenty frames. You can see that as he continues to punch the animation speeds up, which I would have liked to fix with multiple, separate, faster and better animations. Instead, to get temporary animations in the game for design to mess around with, I scaled the original punch's frames to make a slow and fast version and in the end that's what stuck. When the camera dept set up the varying angles on Kratos and Hercules it actually worked better than I thought it would.
There were a few design elements that also needed animated cameras to change. One of these was Kratos sliding down the arena as Hercules lifts it upwards. The camera had to show the arena being tilted and the peril waiting at the end. Kratos tumbles and slides and rolls all the way down the surface until crashing through the arena's rail at the end(which is probably my favorite part). Originally the camera followed closely behind Kratos(a la Uncharted 2's crumbling building)as he slid down the arena and hung suspended above him as he flies off the end. Since there was no art below the arena I couldn't point the camera downwards, and instead had to pan out, cutting at the last second as he breaks through the railing. As a result the camera is way too far out to see what was probably the most polished animation I did for the entire fight. I'm not sure how jarring the cut is to others, or how obvious the height of the fall is(all the way down Mt. Olympus), but for what we had to show I think it worked out.
In the first iteration of design there was a completely different way for Kratos to climb back to the top of the slope but that was scrapped when we realized it would require new code. At the time we were rushed and no one had any real alternatives but I figured we could rely on our normal cs moves so I went ahead and made the gigantic bicycle-kicking jump attack back up to the top. It went in the game but was way too fast for a button prompt so I suggested slowing down the jump towards the apex of its' arc. As soon as the slowdown went in I tweaked the camera and animation to show Kratos' silhouette as strongly as possible, with depth of field for added effect. All of that sold the idea. Seeing that jump in commercials for the game confirmed(at least to me) that it was a solid GOW moment.
Originally the outcome of the fight was much less certain. The little homage to Disney's Tarzan was the original ending, which stayed in the game, but it's definitely less effective/uncertain after having seen Herc's face crushed in, which we added later. The face smash was actually inspired by the movie Irreversible, in which a guy's face is brutally crushed by a fire extinguisher. Again, Hercules' reactions to the repeated punch are another animation that was temporary at one point yet stayed first pass. His lack of movement actually added to his helplessness, making it an even more grisly scene.
One other thing that I think worked really well were Hercules' bare handed cs moves(not shown), which allowed us to get really close with the camera and also show off Kratos doing some cestus punches that look pretty powerful. They also show him rolling back into his fighting stance, looking ready for action.
In any event the Hercules fight was riddled with logistical problems and design issues. What started with one designer and one animator for the first half ended up being passed along to another designer and yet another animator to finish it. Everything got ironed out eventually and I think overall it's a decent (if somewhat tedious) fight. The work we did at the end really helped the sequence feel heroic(if a bit leaning towards gore porn) and probably made the fight more memorable than would have been otherwise.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Interviewed.
A few months ago an art student from Otis College asked to interview me. Here are my dumb answers:
Whats your name?
Michael Carr
What company do you currently work for?
SCEA Studios Santa Monica
How long have you worked there for?
A little over 3 and 1/2 years.
What is your job title for that company? (animator, storyboarder, ect.)
Senior Animator
Where have you worked previously? (be specific)
THQ(tester)
Paradox Development(concept artist, camera designer, FX designer, level designer, animator)
Midway L.A.(animator)
Neversoft Entertainment(animator)
How did you get the job you currently have?
I started in game development as a quality assurance tester at THQ. Eventually I became a concept artist for a small company called Paradox. There I tried my hand at several positions, staying an hour or two extra for a few weeks learning 3DStudioMax and animating. About a month later I was an animator. After trying to go back to school, dropping out and returning to Paradox(which had become Midway L.A.), and then moving on to Neversoft, I was looking for projects better suited to my interests.
I had previously worked with many of the designers and animators from SCEA at Paradox. There was just a ridiculous amount of talent at Paradox, and several of us eventually ended up at SCEA on the God of War team. I applied through the Sony website for an animator position with just a resume. SCEA sent me an animation test for Maya, with versions of their character rigs to test animation skill, timing abillity, and technical knowledge. After completing and passing the test I interviewed with members of the team and was hired on as an animator. After being there for one year and working on several key moments in God of War III I earned the title of Senior Animator.
Did you graduate? If so, where?
While working at Paradox I decided I might go back to school and learn more about animation so I quit and attended CalArts for roughly six months. I dropped out after realizing I would be competing for my old job if I had stayed enrolled there and went back to my old job. CalArts also doesn't teach the kind of animation needed for games.
What is your work environment like?
Our work environment is a relatively laid back studio, with many of the industry's top talent working across all of our departments. Work days are normally 10-6:30, allowing for some people to come in and leave earlier if they choose to. The studio has an open floor plan, without many offices or cubicles. This helps allow our departments to communicate and collaborate relatively frequently depending on the scheduled tasks at hand. The studio is also in Santa Monica, CA, where the weather is usually perfect.
How many hours do you work weekly?
For the first 75% of most game projects the work hours are usually normal, meaning 40 hours a week. Towards the end of projects teams usually go into some type of "crunch" mode, where employees might find themselves working 60-80 hours a week, and some working even more than that. On the last project most of the team was required to come in during some weekends, though I rarely did. While I don't think crunch has ever helped a game's development it seems to be the norm for most developers, and most companies work far more hours than we do.
What are you currently working on?
I can't really speak about what we are working on at the moment, but we are trying to utilize the team's strengths (game play, animation, presentation) to build upon and expand the foundation of things we have established in the past. We are also doing a lot of experimenting right now and the animation team in particular is strong in their creation of visual development for new ideas.
Are there currently any Internships/Job opportunities at your industry?
There are many jobs/internships/opportunities in gaming. Several websites devoted to achieving a career in games exist, including many for individual companies. As far as I know SCEA is currently looking for animators and programmers.
Do you have personal time to do side projects?
I do have time, but under contract with SCEA anything I create away from work is technically theirs. Outside of that it's very tough to come home and want to sit in front of a computer and work at something similar to what I already do all day. My time at home is largely spent looking at other forms of entertainment to keep up with the industry or cultivate ideas.
Did you end up where you thought you would be?
I never had any idea where I would end up in life. As a kid I loved playing games and had a ton of ideas for them but didn't know anything about how they were actually made. Working as a tester made me understand how to problem solve but still didn't offer much insight into the creation of actual game assets. Even after ten years in the industry I still don't know a terrible amount about the technical side of things(e.g. programming), but I do feel like animation is where I fit best right now. Our team recently won a few animation awards so I guess that's some kind of validation for belonging where I'm at.
Where do you see yourself in the future (Do you want to work somewhere else)?
Ultimately I would like to become a creative director, whether at SCEA or somewhere else. I feel that as an animator with a background in anatomy and life drawing I have the knowledge to invent a game world, its creatures, characters, stories, and visuals. Unfortunately, that title is hard to come by. As far as wanting to work anywhere else I don't really know. SCEA is the best company I have worked for so far and it would be hard to imagine working anywhere else, especially considering the large amount of friends I have there.
Who are your typical clients?
We are an internal division of Sony so we work exclusively on Playstation titles, most notably the God of War series.
What are your sources of inspiration?
Why things are the way they are in life is huge for me and I always seem to need to know the underlying structure of anything I see. Our team often speaks to each other with references to moments in movies, other games, and television, but nothing compares to videos of animals on Youtube. The National Geographic channel is the holy grail for animators. Framepool is also a great website for reference that I often go to, as well as the Gobelins school's videos.
Can you give any advice on a student entering the industry?
Have a great demo reel that shows understanding of game animation for the company you are applying to. If you are applying for a realistic game don't submit cartoony or exaggerated animation. Also, understand hit presentation. This means knowing how to really sell a moment that "feels" good when a player pushes a button and the corresponding action. Play as many games as you can afford to and study what you like as well as what you don't and why.
We receive an absurd of amount of reels that show typical Animation Mentor studies in acting that don't present much in the way of actual animation skill relative to gaming. Movies and games are completely different beasts and knowing the difference is important for getting your reel looked at seriously. Also, understanding games and game language in general is paramount to landing a job. If you don't play games, you'd probably have a hard time making them well.
One other thing to consider is how you interact with others. If you aren't sociable, easy to work with, or clear in your language it's very hard to work in games. I've seen at least two people in the last year with great reels that didn't land the job because of their personalities.
What programs do you typically use?
SCEA uses Maya for animation. In the past I've used 3DStudioMax, Photoshop, and Motion Builder.
What would a typical salary of a new employee look like?
Starting off at a small company as a 20 year old kid with no degree who was kind of like an intern I made minimum wage at the time(7.25/hr). Within a few months I was making 35k/yr, then a few months later bumped up to quite a bit more. That was ten years ago, so I'd have to guess that there is no reason an animator with little experience couldn't make as much as 50k if you have the talent and the drive .
Whats your name?
Michael Carr
What company do you currently work for?
SCEA Studios Santa Monica
How long have you worked there for?
A little over 3 and 1/2 years.
What is your job title for that company? (animator, storyboarder, ect.)
Senior Animator
Where have you worked previously? (be specific)
THQ(tester)
Paradox Development(concept artist, camera designer, FX designer, level designer, animator)
Midway L.A.(animator)
Neversoft Entertainment(animator)
How did you get the job you currently have?
I started in game development as a quality assurance tester at THQ. Eventually I became a concept artist for a small company called Paradox. There I tried my hand at several positions, staying an hour or two extra for a few weeks learning 3DStudioMax and animating. About a month later I was an animator. After trying to go back to school, dropping out and returning to Paradox(which had become Midway L.A.), and then moving on to Neversoft, I was looking for projects better suited to my interests.
I had previously worked with many of the designers and animators from SCEA at Paradox. There was just a ridiculous amount of talent at Paradox, and several of us eventually ended up at SCEA on the God of War team. I applied through the Sony website for an animator position with just a resume. SCEA sent me an animation test for Maya, with versions of their character rigs to test animation skill, timing abillity, and technical knowledge. After completing and passing the test I interviewed with members of the team and was hired on as an animator. After being there for one year and working on several key moments in God of War III I earned the title of Senior Animator.
Did you graduate? If so, where?
While working at Paradox I decided I might go back to school and learn more about animation so I quit and attended CalArts for roughly six months. I dropped out after realizing I would be competing for my old job if I had stayed enrolled there and went back to my old job. CalArts also doesn't teach the kind of animation needed for games.
What is your work environment like?
Our work environment is a relatively laid back studio, with many of the industry's top talent working across all of our departments. Work days are normally 10-6:30, allowing for some people to come in and leave earlier if they choose to. The studio has an open floor plan, without many offices or cubicles. This helps allow our departments to communicate and collaborate relatively frequently depending on the scheduled tasks at hand. The studio is also in Santa Monica, CA, where the weather is usually perfect.
How many hours do you work weekly?
For the first 75% of most game projects the work hours are usually normal, meaning 40 hours a week. Towards the end of projects teams usually go into some type of "crunch" mode, where employees might find themselves working 60-80 hours a week, and some working even more than that. On the last project most of the team was required to come in during some weekends, though I rarely did. While I don't think crunch has ever helped a game's development it seems to be the norm for most developers, and most companies work far more hours than we do.
What are you currently working on?
I can't really speak about what we are working on at the moment, but we are trying to utilize the team's strengths (game play, animation, presentation) to build upon and expand the foundation of things we have established in the past. We are also doing a lot of experimenting right now and the animation team in particular is strong in their creation of visual development for new ideas.
Are there currently any Internships/Job opportunities at your industry?
There are many jobs/internships/opportunities in gaming. Several websites devoted to achieving a career in games exist, including many for individual companies. As far as I know SCEA is currently looking for animators and programmers.
Do you have personal time to do side projects?
I do have time, but under contract with SCEA anything I create away from work is technically theirs. Outside of that it's very tough to come home and want to sit in front of a computer and work at something similar to what I already do all day. My time at home is largely spent looking at other forms of entertainment to keep up with the industry or cultivate ideas.
Did you end up where you thought you would be?
I never had any idea where I would end up in life. As a kid I loved playing games and had a ton of ideas for them but didn't know anything about how they were actually made. Working as a tester made me understand how to problem solve but still didn't offer much insight into the creation of actual game assets. Even after ten years in the industry I still don't know a terrible amount about the technical side of things(e.g. programming), but I do feel like animation is where I fit best right now. Our team recently won a few animation awards so I guess that's some kind of validation for belonging where I'm at.
Where do you see yourself in the future (Do you want to work somewhere else)?
Ultimately I would like to become a creative director, whether at SCEA or somewhere else. I feel that as an animator with a background in anatomy and life drawing I have the knowledge to invent a game world, its creatures, characters, stories, and visuals. Unfortunately, that title is hard to come by. As far as wanting to work anywhere else I don't really know. SCEA is the best company I have worked for so far and it would be hard to imagine working anywhere else, especially considering the large amount of friends I have there.
Who are your typical clients?
We are an internal division of Sony so we work exclusively on Playstation titles, most notably the God of War series.
What are your sources of inspiration?
Why things are the way they are in life is huge for me and I always seem to need to know the underlying structure of anything I see. Our team often speaks to each other with references to moments in movies, other games, and television, but nothing compares to videos of animals on Youtube. The National Geographic channel is the holy grail for animators. Framepool is also a great website for reference that I often go to, as well as the Gobelins school's videos.
Can you give any advice on a student entering the industry?
Have a great demo reel that shows understanding of game animation for the company you are applying to. If you are applying for a realistic game don't submit cartoony or exaggerated animation. Also, understand hit presentation. This means knowing how to really sell a moment that "feels" good when a player pushes a button and the corresponding action. Play as many games as you can afford to and study what you like as well as what you don't and why.
We receive an absurd of amount of reels that show typical Animation Mentor studies in acting that don't present much in the way of actual animation skill relative to gaming. Movies and games are completely different beasts and knowing the difference is important for getting your reel looked at seriously. Also, understanding games and game language in general is paramount to landing a job. If you don't play games, you'd probably have a hard time making them well.
One other thing to consider is how you interact with others. If you aren't sociable, easy to work with, or clear in your language it's very hard to work in games. I've seen at least two people in the last year with great reels that didn't land the job because of their personalities.
What programs do you typically use?
SCEA uses Maya for animation. In the past I've used 3DStudioMax, Photoshop, and Motion Builder.
What would a typical salary of a new employee look like?
Starting off at a small company as a 20 year old kid with no degree who was kind of like an intern I made minimum wage at the time(7.25/hr). Within a few months I was making 35k/yr, then a few months later bumped up to quite a bit more. That was ten years ago, so I'd have to guess that there is no reason an animator with little experience couldn't make as much as 50k if you have the talent and the drive .
Monday, April 18, 2011
First Pass/Final Pass.
The concept of "first pass/final pass animation" is something I picked up at my first job. We were a small company that was constantly under pressure and crunched non-stop. I was still learning how to animate but was surrounded by people who could crank out multiple animations every day, along with a couple of Super Designers who could put the moves in the game at a ridiculous speed. There was no time to block out animations, much less plan them. It was always just "go."
Out of necessity I got faster. I learned to set up hotkeys, picked out a workflow that suited speed and accessibility over anything else, and started cranking out animations, too. I learned to use interpolation and overshoot to my advantage, how to make strong key poses, how to keep clean, well organized keys, and to work smarter, not harder. I began to animate from start to finish, one pose to the next, until returning to idle again. If I had to go back into the middle of an animation to change something I deleted everything after it. Anything I altered also changed what came after it so it got deleted and besides, if I did the rest before I could do it again, the next time faster and most likely better.
The schedule and the sheer volume of animations required forced all of the animators to work as quickly as possible, keeping in mind that we might never get to touch these animations again. This turned out to be the case more often than not towards the end of the project and at one point someone joked that our work was, "first pass/final pass."
On the next project our lead animator took me aside to review one of my animations. It was a snappy jab that hit behind the character on frame 6 in a sort of pseudo martial arts style. It was 40 frames long and took me about an hour to animate. He hit play and we watched in silence. After a few loops he stopped the animation at a random point and then started it again. He did this again, starting and stopping at a random spot. Then five more times. Each time he stopped the character was twisted in various ways, winding up, hitting, recoiling, returning to idle. He told me, "You see how this looks cool whenever I stop it? Good work."
(That animation eventually became Kung Lao's backwards snake attack in MK: Shaolin Monks.)
First pass/final pass had taught me to focus on key poses. The clean, linear, straight forward and kinematic way I'd learned to animate led to poses that fed into one another. Having a 2d background, it only then occurred to me that in-betweens are largely unnecessary in 3d. If you let the program do the work for you and are smart in your posing most of the transitions between your keys will shake themselves out with minimal adjustment. You can work faster and more efficiently by simply understanding what came before and what comes next, always thinking that this is final, and that the next pose absolutely has to work.
Though I have more time than I have ever had to work on characters these days, I still keep the first pass/final pass rule in mind. It's something I won't ever be able to get rid of, but then again I'd probably get bored if I had to work on anything too long anyhow.
Out of necessity I got faster. I learned to set up hotkeys, picked out a workflow that suited speed and accessibility over anything else, and started cranking out animations, too. I learned to use interpolation and overshoot to my advantage, how to make strong key poses, how to keep clean, well organized keys, and to work smarter, not harder. I began to animate from start to finish, one pose to the next, until returning to idle again. If I had to go back into the middle of an animation to change something I deleted everything after it. Anything I altered also changed what came after it so it got deleted and besides, if I did the rest before I could do it again, the next time faster and most likely better.
The schedule and the sheer volume of animations required forced all of the animators to work as quickly as possible, keeping in mind that we might never get to touch these animations again. This turned out to be the case more often than not towards the end of the project and at one point someone joked that our work was, "first pass/final pass."
On the next project our lead animator took me aside to review one of my animations. It was a snappy jab that hit behind the character on frame 6 in a sort of pseudo martial arts style. It was 40 frames long and took me about an hour to animate. He hit play and we watched in silence. After a few loops he stopped the animation at a random point and then started it again. He did this again, starting and stopping at a random spot. Then five more times. Each time he stopped the character was twisted in various ways, winding up, hitting, recoiling, returning to idle. He told me, "You see how this looks cool whenever I stop it? Good work."
(That animation eventually became Kung Lao's backwards snake attack in MK: Shaolin Monks.)
First pass/final pass had taught me to focus on key poses. The clean, linear, straight forward and kinematic way I'd learned to animate led to poses that fed into one another. Having a 2d background, it only then occurred to me that in-betweens are largely unnecessary in 3d. If you let the program do the work for you and are smart in your posing most of the transitions between your keys will shake themselves out with minimal adjustment. You can work faster and more efficiently by simply understanding what came before and what comes next, always thinking that this is final, and that the next pose absolutely has to work.
Though I have more time than I have ever had to work on characters these days, I still keep the first pass/final pass rule in mind. It's something I won't ever be able to get rid of, but then again I'd probably get bored if I had to work on anything too long anyhow.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The G.D. Chimera.
In a recent interview an animation candidate asked the question, "What do you guys use as inspiration?" I responded with, "Whatever we want."
It's not an over-generalization to say that everything inspires an animator. In fact, everything should. If you aren't noticing the subtleties of everyday things all around you all the time you're not doing your job.
Cues from real life are the greatest source of reference and inspiration I can think of. Every day I go outside and look around and notice some new thing happening with plants or animals or people. Simply questioning why things are the way they are brings about so many new observations it is astounding. It's so important to not only make these observations but to also understand the function behind them.
Outside of vestigial features everything you see in life exists for a very specific, very functional purpose. Everything from animal coloration to diet to the shape of teeth is important. Understanding why many animals have a lighter underbelly was totally eye-opening for me.
While making God of War III I had to work very hard to reconcile with the fact that we were animating mythological creatures that made zero sense anatomically. The Chimera, my least favorite among them, was particularly challenging. I struggled with walk cycles, idles, normal attacks, everything. The only thing I animated that didn't change all that much were the cs kills, perhaps because I was so fond of killing that thing. In any case it took a pass from at least 3 animators for everything else to complete the normal move set for the character.
I know most animators say they love a challenge but when a creature doesn't actually make sense it is very hard for me to wrap my head around it. It's not so much a challenge as it is a labor. There's no reference for something like this. There's no real life equivalent. There's no way this thing could even realistically walk. There's also a limited amount of time to experiment.
At the time we just had to "go for it." I still believe the unconventionality of the character led to a lengthy turnaround on not only the animation side but for combat design as well. No one really had a solid grasp on what this creature was. In the beginning we were set on a very specific plan that gave me all the freedom I wanted to determine how the heads would be killed off but we lacked a plan for nearly everything in between.
I have to wonder how the Chimera could have been better. Could it have made more sense? Shouldn't the lion have walked like a quadruped, too? Who knows? In the end people enjoyed fighting her(yea, she's a lady) and killing each individual head. I think it works to a degree but now I am so much more wary of designs that don't work from a perspective based on motion.
The bottom line is that creature design is best when it works anatomically. When something has correct anatomy then you can start to break the rules of its' form in motion, instead of the other way around. From concept art to modeling to rigging to design to animation to sound and effects, get as creative as you want so long as it makes sense. Things will go much more smoothly and efficiently.
It's not an over-generalization to say that everything inspires an animator. In fact, everything should. If you aren't noticing the subtleties of everyday things all around you all the time you're not doing your job.
Cues from real life are the greatest source of reference and inspiration I can think of. Every day I go outside and look around and notice some new thing happening with plants or animals or people. Simply questioning why things are the way they are brings about so many new observations it is astounding. It's so important to not only make these observations but to also understand the function behind them.
Outside of vestigial features everything you see in life exists for a very specific, very functional purpose. Everything from animal coloration to diet to the shape of teeth is important. Understanding why many animals have a lighter underbelly was totally eye-opening for me.
While making God of War III I had to work very hard to reconcile with the fact that we were animating mythological creatures that made zero sense anatomically. The Chimera, my least favorite among them, was particularly challenging. I struggled with walk cycles, idles, normal attacks, everything. The only thing I animated that didn't change all that much were the cs kills, perhaps because I was so fond of killing that thing. In any case it took a pass from at least 3 animators for everything else to complete the normal move set for the character.
I know most animators say they love a challenge but when a creature doesn't actually make sense it is very hard for me to wrap my head around it. It's not so much a challenge as it is a labor. There's no reference for something like this. There's no real life equivalent. There's no way this thing could even realistically walk. There's also a limited amount of time to experiment.
At the time we just had to "go for it." I still believe the unconventionality of the character led to a lengthy turnaround on not only the animation side but for combat design as well. No one really had a solid grasp on what this creature was. In the beginning we were set on a very specific plan that gave me all the freedom I wanted to determine how the heads would be killed off but we lacked a plan for nearly everything in between.
I have to wonder how the Chimera could have been better. Could it have made more sense? Shouldn't the lion have walked like a quadruped, too? Who knows? In the end people enjoyed fighting her(yea, she's a lady) and killing each individual head. I think it works to a degree but now I am so much more wary of designs that don't work from a perspective based on motion.
The bottom line is that creature design is best when it works anatomically. When something has correct anatomy then you can start to break the rules of its' form in motion, instead of the other way around. From concept art to modeling to rigging to design to animation to sound and effects, get as creative as you want so long as it makes sense. Things will go much more smoothly and efficiently.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
lefty maya setup for animators
as an animator there are very few tools in such robust programs as maya and 3dstudiomax that i actually use daily. for the most part move, rotate, and tumble(arc rotate in max)are the primary tools i use. this is basically my hotkey layout i use in either program. its on the numberpad because im left handed and its much better organized than the staggered letter keyboard. i find it much more efficient than using the normal hotkeys.as you can see some of the tools are toggles but some, like the scrub tool(normally holding and releasing k in maya), simply turns it on. there is no release/off function because i dont want to have to hold down the button while i scrub. typically the next thing i do is to turn on another tool anyhow, canceling that function.
ive recently switched to a few new marking menus, notably the tangent, copy/paste keys, and display mode marking menus. this replaces the need for two keys to change display modes, but im not quite used to it yet.
in any case, these twenty buttons are 99% of what i use on a daily basis, and are really all anyone needs to animate. special case things like ik/fk snap are handled through internal menus which i dont use as much.
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