Category: Advanced 3D Animation with Ting

Interview with artist
30 min of your time
Speak with
How did u find your style?
Artist journey (how)
Challenges day-to-day
Role in the recent project
What u think about AI?
Career path
Advice technical to Learn: where to start, what skill u should have, software

Artist journey
  How did you get this job?
  How did you find your style?
  The biggest challange of your journey?
  What inspired you to be an artist?
  How did you bridge from student to professional?

Artist responsibility (day to day)
What criteria do you use to judge your work?
  How do you manage a team of artists at different skills?
  Managing timeline and personal life? (work life balance)
  On a typical day of this position, what do you do? What does your day look like?

Role and responsibility (current)
  Current role and responsibility
  What do you look for in junior artists?
  How to ensure team productivity and communication?
  What would you expect from a junior/recent graduate co-worker?

Opinion on Al
Opinion on low quality Al animation?
  Al help with creation limitation?
  Ai workflow for your wok?

Career path
  When/how did you decide this career?
  Any moment you think of quitting?
  Why do you choose this career, and do you recommend this career?
  Do you have a mentor? Do you think mentor is important for an artist?

Advice (Technical to learn, for students)
  Important ability for student to improve?
  Your shortcoming and how to overcome them?
  Common mistakes you see in students?
  Any resource you recommend improving the skill?

This week Ting talked with us about work and industry.

Where to search for a job: LinkedIn, studio social media, company website (type maya to search work in company)
portfolio, cv, interest in concrete job, availability.
Ask a recruiter on the job fair: are there any projects, when is the best time to apply on this position, what are you looking for in animator, salary, research about studio before, how they operate (the workflow).

Key words through ai: look for job description.
Cover letter:
– not what in cv
– Why you want to work in this company
– How can you contribute to the company
– What I can learn from job

Showreel:
– customize it
– Best work (judge by weakest work)
– Strong beginning and strong ending
– Under 1 min
– Put info: what did you do

Interview:
– Hr/artist/hr
– Info about interview (small-talk)
– Be honest
– Why you want to work on us
– Why we should pick us
– What do you know about us
– Know Background of the company
– I have interviews lining up
– Experience? Not yet

Ex:
Tell me about yourself? (1min): they want to see how u communicate and who u are; experience, what u did, your interest linked to experience
Why do u work for them? Projects, future plans of company that align with you; I saw your work and I liked style/animation/emotions
What is your strength? Pick one skill and speak how u really case; I’m good at this, but it is not a problem
Do u have questions? For this project what is the biggest concern/challenge? General question: pick one shot from their project and how do you did it (for artists)? If you hired me, and I’m working for the company, could you go back to my interview and tell me about one point where I could improve?
Which project would you prefer to work on? They all sounds very good, but I prefer this one, although I like others too
How fast you animate? It depends on the project, Riggs, style, feedback. If I had more details, I would give you more precise answers. Give them number: 90 frames = 8 hours = 1 day

Freelance
you need a networking
Paperwork
Rate: they show you project: in total it would be 3000, make sure everything is written down (feedback how many) // hire u day-by-day
If you have 3 companies, then you stable

3 layers of freelance

1. Rate how to calculate per day
2. How much you want to get per year
3. How much you can bring money for them
   To be good freelancer, be good at 2:
   Your work is high quality
   You never miss a deadline
   Have a nice personality

Facial Poses

Here is the second version of the shot:

Here is my feedback:

Pose 1:

• offset eyes (keep them closed for longer)

Pose 2:

• quick in and slow in of movement to make it snappy

Pose 3:

• eyes movement at the end

Heavy Object & Change of Mind (Polish)

Here is my latest shot:

Facial Pose (Connecting Poses)

This week our assignment was to connect facial poses from the last week.

Here is my feedback:

Pose 1:

• not enough keys
• 12F => faster
• offset mouth

Pose 2:

• delay one eye

Pose 2 to 3:

• give it more time

Pose 3:

• mouth moves after eyes
• head a bit after eyes
• closer to the end add key

Heavy Object & Change of Mind (Spline+Polish)

Here is the new version of the shot:

Ting gave me feedback:

• 187F – COG hits the wall
• hips translate movements
• hips should move with the body
• move hips to the right

Heavy Object & Change of Mind

Here is my blocking plus version of the shot.

Ting gave me feedback:

• for montage effect, legs should be placed differently
• make door slide more
• 250F – raise the shoulder
• 10F – remove the rotation of the toe
• 27F – correct left arm
• move toe, not hill
• 169-172F – breakdown
• 196F – rotate the body

Facial Pose

Here are more fasial poses.

Facial Expressions

This week we studied facial expressions and how to make them look real.

These are 3 main features that sould be maintained.

1. Faces in real life are asymmetrical, so it has to be the same in 3D. What is more, in order to make them more believable we can make exagerate expressions.

2. To make face more appealing, shapes should be assymetrical too.

For our assignment we had to pose 5 facial poses using model sheet.

Heavy Object & Change of Mind (Blocking)

Here is my blocking stage of the shot.

Ting gave me feedback:

• move all body
• add more poses
• 45F – do not move tip toes
• 64F – clear the silhouette

Stitch’s Tea Party

This week we had a workshop on constrains: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/hCMyBJvRC9Xo/?offlineMode=1#/41067327/42801182/f_0

Heavy Object & Change of Mind

This week we continued to study story stracture and, thus, for our home assignment we had to create a story. The goal was to combine a heavy object with a clear moment of change of mind.

This week it was only planning for our future shot, so here is my reference: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/pFRNY8YXdexM/?offlineMode=1#/41013788/42745233/f_53

Ting gave me feedback on my planning. Overall, idea is fine, but i have to correct some details:

• use montage camera (1 – knock /cut/ 2 – push /cut/ 3 – key /cut/ 4 – tired /cut/ 5 – slide the door)
• no further reaction after opening the door
• build the tention

Self-Study: Constraints, Parenting, and Locators

Additional topic we studied this week was how to grab objects in Maya.

Key definitions: 

• Parenting vs. Constraints: Understand that parenting is a permanent family structure in your outliner, while constraints are connections you can turn on and off. And know different types of constraints.
• Locators: Learn to use these as invisible anchors. Instead of pinning a prop directly to a hand, you often pin it to a locator to keep your animation channels clean.
• Parent keys: Mastering the Weight attribute in the Channel Box to hand off an object from one thing to another.

This week we focused on storytelling. In order to make an appiling story, it must follow a narrative. The main trick here is to make a character live on the screen and make decisions. Thus, the story would follow character’s actions, it will be created by their own hands. Surely, it does not mean that the story itself should be chaotic list of events. It needs clear structure. There exist different story structures but most of them are based on the idea of a conflict because it creates a challenge for a hero.

Assignment for this week was in pairs. Chi-Chih and I decided to do it together. We needed to create a cinematic scene in Maya in Previs. The theme was “Hunter to Prey.” The main idea was to depict a dramatic power shift in the story using two characters or more. Duration: 30 – 45 seconds.

Here is our storyboard:

We decided to split the work in half. Chi-Chih was animating first half of the shots, while I focused on the second one.

Here is the first version of owr previs:

We recieved feedback from Ting. We had to change several shots in the beggining to make the world more real and alive. Only after that we can introduce the character.

Here are the notes which I took:

• give piece by piece info
• camera moves slow = creepy
• add a shot before the jump shot and eating shot
• first 3 shots: play with focal lenght
• add a frame showing human before
• fish eye: make it steady
• show the flowers pulling in the camera view, then cut to the next shot
• devide them even more in the last frames: human VS monster

Here is our new version:

Last term, we started studying how to use camera in the most efficient ways to show your work. Camera is one of the most important tools which we can use to present our work in the way we (as artists and creators) want the audience to see it. Camera helps to pass your vision and message. We discussed principles of composition, shot size, camera angle.

In order to understand these concepts better, we started by drawing storyboard for already existing movies. As for me, I chose film “Lawrence of Arabia”.

This week we proceeded to study camera language. And to answer on the question “Where I should put my camera?” first you have to know what you want to say and what is this concrete scene about. There are 4 main aspects we can use: focus, focal length, geometry in frame, and camera movement. The task to improve our skills was to recreate a story board for alredy existing scene, adjusting the camera angles in order to make a each frame more appealing.

Another assignment for this week was to create two Storyboards of “5 + 5 challenge”. The purpose was to convey a clear story or a specific emotion using exactly 5 shots, where each shot lasts exactly 5 seconds. We were given a simple scene: a guy in a bar. I was struggling to think of an interisting story within 5 shots long, so I used technique which we studied in class.

Here are my 2 storyborads:

After presenting our assignment, we exchanged our storyboards with each other and turned it into camera in Maya, using the provided scene and character.