Sebastian Castilho

I’m gonna go out on a whim here and say that there’s probably been a time where you’ve been watching a film or advert with some CG characters and you thought to yourself, now how was that made? Well Im’ma tell you: Through a bloody lot of effort and learning, that’s how

I mean take a good look at this rediculousness.

Numerous buttons and information EVERYWHERE, and that’s just the surface. There are menus……. behind menus. Eventually you learn to sort of ignore some of them to stop your mind from tripping out.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about though. To quickly preface this: A basic character animation requires a few things – First, a 3D model. Then a “rig” which is best described as the skeleton; the part of the body you don’t see that controls our movement arcs.

Recently I’ve been learning about the joys of rigging; and by joys, I mean relentless complexity. Sure it’s quite simple to do a very basic skeleton; it’s a matter of dot to dot (well, joint to joint), but you will find that it ends up looking completely unnatural. To make something look good is a completely different matter.

Reciting what I’ve learnt is as useful as reciting the bible – Those interested will already know all about it; those not interested don’t need to know about it. So I will simply say this – learning to animate requires you to enter a rabbit tunnel – to which there is an end, but only after a very long and dark journey. A tunnel with many different little paths that require different workarounds and puzzle solving to get through. Put more simply – there’s a lot of different tools at your disposal, but each part of the human body will really only work out well if you use a very specific tool and method of using the tool. Rigging is just one of the stages prior to finally being able to animate too The tunnel just keeps on going.

But hey, Gromit made it through the alright.

It’s been a hell of a long time since I last did a detailed drawing – five years in fact. During that time I’ve seen countless amazing pieces uploaded to DeviantArt by different artists. Finally last week, I decided to try it out for myself.

Now, I’m not particularly a fan of Lady GaGa, but the photo that I used as reference had a great pose. Unfortunately what I didn’t realise was how bad a choice it was! Light, messy hair, along with light smooth skin makes for an extremely hard drawing.

This piece was done on A3 150gsm paper, non-smooth, which is why the shading looks so rough. I have bought Bristol Board paper now, so hopefully my next drawing will turn out better

You can also see this on DeviantArt.

Imagine sitting at the very front row on the farmost left of a cinema theatre. Now imagine the screen being much larger than usual and having a 3D projection. That was my first experience of a 3D film – that was Avatar for me

Needless to say, I’ve been weary of seeing a 3D film ever since – especially one that was “upconverted” (if that’s the correct nerd term) from 2D.

Nevertheless, I finally had the opportunity to see Toy Story 3 yesterday and had the decision of seeing it in 3D. I thought to myself, well this is Pixar’s work – hopefully they of all people can make 3D work. And work it did I saw it in an IMAX theatre, sat right in the very centre of the cinema, between two groups of strangers.

The effect is incredible. Everything had real depth and the visual experience is just far more immense than I could have imagined. The great thing too is that none of the richness of the colour and clarity is obscured by the 3D glasses, nor by the projection of the two slightly offset images that make the three dimensional effect.

I would seriously like to know how the glasses work. The lenses simply feel like two bendy sheets of thin plastic. I would love to have this setup in my house

A friend recently asked me if there’s a book he can get for his young brother who’s becoming interested in animation. I made one suggestion since the brother’s only young, but there are numerous great books and websites to help people learning to animate, including myself.

Books:

• The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams (Has pretty much everything you need to know)
• Imagine Animation magazine (A year’s subscription includes a huge company directory; unfortunately it’s sorted A-Z rather than by city )

Helpful communities:

• http://www.11secondclub.com/ (also has great free animation rigs to use in various programs)
• http://www.zbrushcentral.com/
• http://forums.cgsociety.org/
• http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/

Podcasts (all found on iTunes):

• Animation Podcast (by Eric Goldberg)
• Frames Per Second Animation Podcasts
• Speaking of Animation
• Spline Cast
• Toon In! …to the Masters of Animation

Blogs

• http://www.animationblog.org/
• http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/

For a beginner, this is everything you need. It will take you a hell of a long time before you make good use of it all; probably your whole life time in fact. Enjoy

All this talk about 3D recently has just got me thinking.

1D = Length

2D = Length and Height

3D = Length, Height and Depth

4D = Length, Height, Depth, Time & Space

Animation = Objects that have length, height and depth, moving around in space (space as in the space around us, not Space up there)

So really the best way to describe 4D is just to say it’s animation Or am I wrong?