Unless you specifically choose to do hand-drawn animation, no drawing skill is necessary to become a good animator.
Additionally, when hand-drawn animation if the field of choice, there is always a limit to how much drawing skill is necessary. Usually, relatively little drawing skill is needed for 2D animation (see Cartoon Network). The world's most talented drawers can be found illustrating children's books or comic books or making conceptional art for sci-fi movies.
I know you were kidding around, but I think the truth at the center of the joke is that drawing is a sliding scale, and the scale is always changing. Whatever our level of skill, we always know of someone who could kick our butts artistically. Most artists spend little time considering how much they've improved over time, and instead focus on their own shortcomings.
LOL! Everyone hates those people - especially if they're younger than we are... :D
Hi DSB,
Ha ha! Being an old hack myself, I hate those people too!
You said it perfectly here about drawing being a sliding scale. Compare to the best guys, I can't draw but I have an edge over my 3years old son.
Walk in to any 2d studio- big or small, you will find that the best draftman is not usually an animator; the best animator might not draw better than the other animators and your assistants always draw better than you!
If we don't pay enough attention to polish our animation skills as well as our drawing skills. we might find ourselves flipping burgers instead of flipping drawings when the industry goes through changes (it happens!).
Drawing to help us consider and understand what we see
Maybe I'm missing the point here - or maybe it's a question of interpretation.....
Might it not help to think less about the accomplishment of somebody's drawings (in terms of technical, "classical" or academic prowess) - and think more about what any one of us achieves by the effort of drawing from observation in the first place (as opposed to doodling or sketching from the imagination or from the personal memory bank)?
Animation - if it's to trigger a sympathetic response of any kind in an audience - surely ought to share with live action film (and with good prose or songwriting) all the best qualities of observation. By drawing even the simplest quick sketch of a person, an object or a landscape, regardless of the detail or the "finish", we're setting on paper something that begs to be recognised, something that invites a response.
If you look at James Thurber's cartoons you're going to see a highly personal yet wholly recognisable view of the world, as seen through the artist's own myopic, eccentric filter. OK - he may be no Albrecht Durer in terms of draftsmanship - but "horses for courses".....
Again and again I hear people in the CGI context (particularly in colleges where too often there simply ARE no drawing classes or even any experienced drawing teachers) nervously asking if drawing "matters" - the desired "get out of jail free" response being "No siree - go straight to the bank, collect $200, don't even stop to think, look or commit any ideas to paper....".
Drawing's part of the process of planning too - and anybody who's ever tried to construct and move ANYthing, real or virtual, without thinking ahead, can tell you the value of planning.
Top of the pile, though, has to be the question of each person finding and "sounding" their own individual voice through drawing. After all - in storytelling of any kind - we get to the universal via the personal, don't we?
There's far too much argument and concern about technical ability when drawing's discussed - the important thing here is for people to LOOK at what surrounds them in the part of the world they themselves inhabit (not the world as they find it in tiny, far-away pieces on Google), to think about what they see with their own eyes and to apply all of that to what they're trying to realise, whether it's believability in a bit of performance animation or mood/atmosphere in a layout or background painting.
Or am I indeed missing the original point here....?
Maybe I'm missing the point here - or maybe it's a question of interpretation.....
Might it not help to think less about the accomplishment of somebody's drawings (in terms of technical, "classical" or academic prowess) - and think more about what any one of us achieves by the effort of drawing from observation in the first place (as opposed to doodling or sketching from the imagination or from the personal memory bank)?
Animation - if it's to trigger a sympathetic response of any kind in an audience - surely ought to share with live action film (and with good prose or songwriting) all the best qualities of observation. By drawing even the simplest quick sketch of a person, an object or a landscape, regardless of the detail or the "finish", we're setting on paper something that begs to be recognised, something that invites a response.
If you look at James Thurber's cartoons you're going to see a highly personal yet wholly recognisable view of the world, as seen through the artist's own myopic, eccentric filter. OK - he may be no Albrecht Durer in terms of draftsmanship - but "horses for courses".....
Again and again I hear people in the CGI context (particularly in colleges where too often there simply ARE no drawing classes or even any experienced drawing teachers) nervously asking if drawing "matters" - the desired "get out of jail free" response being "No siree - go straight to the bank, collect $200, don't even stop to think, look or commit any ideas to paper....".
Drawing's part of the process of planning too - and anybody who's ever tried to construct and move ANYthing, real or virtual, without thinking ahead, can tell you the value of planning.
Top of the pile, though, has to be the question of each person finding and "sounding" their own individual voice through drawing. After all - in storytelling of any kind - we get to the universal via the personal, don't we?
There's far too much argument and concern about technical ability when drawing's discussed - the important thing here is for people to LOOK at what surrounds them in the part of the world they themselves inhabit (not the world as they find it in tiny, far-away pieces on Google), to think about what they see with their own eyes and to apply all of that to what they're trying to realise, whether it's believability in a bit of performance animation or mood/atmosphere in a layout or background painting.
Or am I indeed missing the original point here....?
FM
No Fraser--I think you are getting the point clearly. My take is much the same: that a lot of newcomers want a shortcut past the intimidating skill of drawing. Even those pros that chimed in with the arguement that drawing isn;t needed have overlooked their own backgrounds--in several cases some have multi-year experience in 2D animation PRIOR to taking on 3D. That kinda slant the debate back in favour of drawing.
I look at it in this way: if someone doesn't want to add drawing skills to their repetoire then more power to them.
I strongly feel they are denying themselves an asset skill that will serve their career, but hey, its THEIR career. The crux of my own arguement in this debate is just that: why pursue a career with only half-assed abilities?
The biz, overall, has a certain level of artistic competence that it asks for--I've long felt it a reasonable thing to demand that of people, and have wondered equally as long why so many aspirants balk ( or are intimidated) at those demands.
Lacking a well-rounded skill-set means the options in one's career become limited, and this in a idustry that can be notoriously ruthless in pigeon-holing people. I was a inbetweener for over 6 years, simply because that was all , was seen to be able to do, that is all I was in the eyes of many around me.
I was lucky to be able to branch out into storyboarding and teaching, but not everyone get's such breaks--more than a few abandon the biz after only a few years.
In the two decades I've been doing this professionally, I understand the nature of the biz well enough to know that specialization can cripple you.
I was encouraged by many mentors ( and personally continue to encourage myself) to cling to the idea of gaining as broad a skill-set as one can.
The clincher to that is that its NOT easy--which is why not a lot of people can (or are willing to) do so. Hey, that's fine, by me, because really all that competition can be a pain. :rolleyes:
—
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
[QUOTE=Ken Davis]No Fraser--I think you are getting the point clearly. My take is much the same: that a lot of newcomers want a shortcut past the intimidating skill of drawing. Even those pros that chimed in with the arguement that drawing isn;t needed have overlooked their own backgrounds--in several cases some have multi-year experience in 2D animation PRIOR to taking on 3D. That kinda slant the debate back in favour of drawing.
Hi Ken,
I know! Admitting to be a 2d guy did not help my argument at all. I just thought maybe others could see that I wasn't just trying to protect my own kind! The other three animators were bad examples too! Melanie, Jason and Kevan all draw very well and tried desperately to pretend that they couldn't. Unfortunately people knew them and quickly pointed that out. I have to find other victims to help my case!:)
The thread went off topic and became heated partly due to my aggressiveness. I must apologize for that.
It's good to see you and Fraser turn this back to a friendly debate.
I'd go for a straight out YES, drawing is important in animation. To deter anyone from failing to try it out. But is it possible to succeed without drawing skills? Yes, there are exceptions for a select few.
Is excellent drawing required for animation? No. Drawing is a form of planning, and I think planning is undisputed to be essential in animation. So a potential animators should not focus on drawing itself, but drawing for animation. Basic perspective, force, weight, breaking joints, line of action. That is the way majority of animators plan their shots, so it should be worth giving it a go to develop your sketching skills. No one should just discard drawing as unimportant just because some people can animate without it. When you have gone the extra mile and have discovered that you can in fact plan better with other ways than drawing, by all means....whatever works for you. I have a feeling that with some practice and exploration, most will turn to drawing as a quick way to get your thoughts out visually. But definitely if you are trying to find a short cut, DON'T. Take up drawing first and see if it helps. But I think drawing is not an absolute criteria for 3D animators, but an asset. Now if you wanted a job as a 2D animator, or an illustrator.....different story. My 2 cents
Quote: (from Harvey Human) [I]"A 3D animator can build his observational skills simply by observing: by watching carefully how things move.
Drawing might not be the best tool for studying and recording movement. Taking video might be better. You'd lose less in translation with video than with a sequence of drawings."
.......
"There is all sorts of visualization work which requires design skill, mathematical skill, and sculptural skill, but little or no drawing skill."[/I]
Hey there, Paul - glad to be thought of as contributing something "friendly"! Are you the same Paul Chung, by the way, who used to work at Uli's in London? Just curious....
Anyway - I'm completely mystified by the above quotes from Harvey. Am I wrong in thinking that the English word "design" comes from the French word "dessin" which, in turn, MEANS to draw?
Even if I'm wrong on the origins of the word - I'd love to know how one can "design" anything without making marks (in any medium, be it on paper or on a tablet/screen) and how, in turn, one can make marks without drawing - unless those marks are purely abstract or verbal.
As for the idea of video footage of pigeons achieveing the same thing as drawing them, I think Harvey's argument is leading us back to the whole notion of Muybridge and the persistence of vision. Yes - the human eye sends information to the brain that we cannot interpret instantaneously. But no - cameras themselves don't interpret or understand - period.
And that, for what it's worth, would be my own point again about drawing as a part of the obesrvation process. Merely capturing a movement is not the same as understanding it. And to animate something well, one has to take the time to arrive at a clear understanding of what one is trying to capture AND communicate. Photography certainly has nothing interpretaive about it - think about all those speed cameras on the UK roads.....
Any device, machine or preson that comes between the individual's own first-hand personal visual experience of an object (or event) and the individual's brain is something which creates both distance and the possibility of confusion or bias. If that were not the case then no editorial power would exist in the hands of news teams covering events with cameras.
Animators would be nuts not to make use of any tools, mechanical or otherwise, which can help them to study creatures or people or natural events which happen too quickly to be seen and "understood" in one go. But that in itself is no argument against drawing either. I'd go so far as to say it's simply an extension of the draftsman's toolkit (not a wholesale replacement for pencils, pens and brushes).
Harping on about the use of cameras (in PLACE of drawing) is simply an argument in favour of impatience in my book. And anybody who's spent any time in animation (in any medium) will, I reckon, appreciate the meaning and importance of the old saying, "more haste, less speed".
And - as Richard Williams repeats again and again in his book - if you don't like boring, repetitive, hard work, what are you doing in animation in the first place? (sorry for the paraphrasing)
If - in sport - one were to argue that moto-cross bikes are faster than running on foot, one would be "right" in straightforward objective terms - but would that necessarily mean that riding a motorbike was "better" than (or somehow the same as) walking or running?
To sum up my own feelings about photography versus observational drawing - I recently had to do a presentation for some games design students, loking at performance animation. I ran two separate sequences without sound - one from "Waking Life" (where the college professor and the young guy are walking along the street while the professor talks), the other from "The Incredibles" (where Bob and Helen Parr are arguing late at night after he comes home from saving people from a burning building.
My point is/was - in the latter you can tell from the pantomime, the distillation and exagerration of the characters' movements, EXACTLY what their feelings are. In the former - even though it's derived from a rotoscoping technique rather than from observational or interpretive drawing - all you can tell is that one character's mouth is moving and the other's isn't.
Simply using a camera to capture movement isn't enough to let you begin seeing and understanding something as you intend to adapt and manipulate it when you proceed to use it as an element in any kind of truly communcative animation.
Cameras CAN be useful. Animators would be crazy not to use them (and just as crazy to ignore what's available on Google). That's not the point.
As for the idea of "design" being a job you can do without drawing - that one REALLY loses me......!
I'd be fascinated to know what on earth "design" can be (particularly as a paid job of any kind in the movie production process) if it involves absolutely no drawing of any kind,
[QUOTE=
Hey there, Paul - glad to be thought of as contributing something "friendly"! Are you the same Paul Chung, by the way, who used to work at Uli's in London? Just curious....
Hi Fraser,
This is friendly compare to some of the more heated arguments that went on here early on. It's all good harmless fun as far I'm concerned.
Yes, it's me! I'm working in the states these days. In fact, I saw Uli in London in July and we had a few pints!
Anyway - I'm completely mystified by the above quotes from Harvey. Am I wrong in thinking that the English word "design" comes from the French word "dessin" which, in turn, MEANS to draw?
Even if I'm wrong on the origins of the word - I'd love to know how one can "design" anything without making marks (in any medium, be it on paper or on a tablet/screen) and how, in turn, one can make marks without drawing - unless those marks are purely abstract or verbal.
Hello
We are talking about expert drawing skills here, not simply "marks."
According to my dictionary, "design" comes from the Latin root, designare, meaning "to designate" or point out, name, signify, indicate, specify, or select.
Word origins aside, one doesn't always need to have great drawing skills in order to design. Often a designer is just someone who picks out some fonts, colors, and shapes. Sometimes a designer will describe a design using text or photographs or physical objects instead of sketches. In my experience, if a designer needs something drawn well, he'll hire an illustrator, or often a team of illustrators.
Anyway, that's off-topic.
As for the idea of video footage of pigeons achieveing the same thing as drawing them, I think Harvey's argument is leading us back to the whole notion of Muybridge and the persistence of vision. Yes - the human eye sends information to the brain that we cannot interpret instantaneously. But no - cameras themselves don't interpret or understand - period.
No, a camera doesn't interpret and understand, and neither does a sheet of paper and a pencil.
The camera produces a movie which the animator can interpret and understand as he applies the information directly to his animation.
Photography certainly has nothing interpretaive about it
You're saying that photographs can't be interpretations?
I know some photographers and art professors who would disagree with that notion.
Anyway, that's irrelevant, as the camera - in this case - is used more for recording information than for interpreting, and a video can certainly store much more information about the way things move than a few drawings can. The interpretation comes when the video information (or live performance) is applied to the animation.
A 3D character is very much like a marionette. Like CG character rigs, puppeteers also need to learn how to move their marionettes in believable ways. I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft.
Some animators - with their provided storyboards in hand - may be thinking, "Why spend the time doing several pencil drawings of my character when I can move the actual character into those positions in less time and render out a test movie?" I can see how many animators might consider that to be an unnecessary waste of time.
There are many different ways to animate. If drawing works for some animators, and they can do it quickly enough to remain competitive, then that's fine. If other animators find drawing useless to their craft, that's fine also.
Hey there, Paul - greetings from Scotland!
Good to hear the news about Uli's feature getting off the ground.
Now THERE's a guy whose entire studio revolves around drawing - of all kinds. Plus - he's embraced CGI whole-heartedly, bless him (without building a bonfire of all his desks and pencils).
I guess, Harvey, you and I are finding different ways of making arguments which, though they're not completely at odds with one another, run in slighty different directions.
"We are talking about expert drawing skills here, not simply "marks."
Who's "we"?! The very reason I made the comparison between Thurber and Durer was that, in my own view, the most primitive "marks" can be every bit as valid as "skilled" or polished drawings. Indeed - in many commercial instances - rough, spontaneous marks "mean" far more than over-drawn clean-ups do.
What matters is that those same marks are personal, unique in style and substance to the individual who makes them.
" No, a camera doesn't interpret and understand, and neither does a sheet of paper and a pencil."
Here I simply have to disagree with you. The person holding and controlling the pencil (and/or the camera) does the understanding and the interpreting. What I meant (and I kinda think you know this - but we both obviously enjoy wrestling the details!) was that camera footage - as in the specific example I used of the sequence in "Waking Life" - introduces nothing at all which doesn't appear before the lens. Drawing - be it crude or sophisticated - invariably contains something other than a record of those patterns of light and dark which reach the retina of the person making the marks.
And how many times - when one is forced to rely on photographic or digital reference material (moving or still) - is there a frustration because the wrong angle was captured on film, tape or disc? What do you do if your reference footage is of a pigeon seen from the front but the director has a change of mind and suddenly you need to animate the damn thing from behind?
If you yourself drew the pigeon from observation - for long enough to get any coherent marks on the page at all (as with drawing any bird or animal) - then you'll have, in addition to what you saw and recorded on paper, a useful proportion of remembered material which, when supported by a good enough understanding of the rules of perspective and the elementary stuff about avian anatomy, can help you to produce a plausible reverse angle.
Yes - if you already have a completed CGI model of the damn bird, you can just spin it around. But that's kind of off into yet another argument still, involving the entire process of modeling and rigging and so on and so forth.
"The interpretation comes when the video information is applied to the animation"
Woah!! Dude! No need to shout.....!!
(I may be old, sonny, but I ain't deef.........)
"In my experience, if a designer needs something drawn well, he'll hire an illustrator, or often a team of illustrators."
OK, well - I guess you happen to inhabit a world that's better-staffed and far more generously-funded than the one I usually work in. I'm very happy for you - and for the "designers" who can lift the 'phone and call up pencil-wielding assistants and add them to the payroll (and add their work time to the schedule). But I have to say - it's a world with which I'm not familiar, even though I've worked at the scuzzy AND the fancy ends of the market on both sides of the Atlantic.
There must be a quiet (though expensive) revolution taking place somewhere that I'm not party to.
"I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft."
OK, well - why not go ask some?
It'll be interesting to hear what they say.
Next time I see any unfamiliar stop-frame people, I'll ask them too (but certaily the ones I already know all draw feverishly and with keen enthusiasm).
"There are many different ways to animate. If drawing works for some animators, and they can do it quickly enough to remain competitive, then that's fine. If other animators find drawing useless to their craft, that's fine also."
Yeah, well.....I can't argue with that.
It's a free world (although in most studios I know, like I said earlier, it's anything but "free" in the economic sense).
But for me the words "drawing" and "useless to their craft" sit very uncomfortably together.
I do appreciate (I think) the point you're trying to establish and defend here, Harvey - and I know plenty of people who, under the pressures of commercial deadlines, will "cheat" everything they can to get something to work to a passable degree. I include myself in their number.
Indeed - if you don't know how to "cheat" stuff - you're unlikely to survive long in any corner of the industry.
I guess I just believe that - by deliberately or stubbornly avoiding the need to draw from observation (or memory) - the only "cheating" you're doing is cheating yourself.
Sure - plenty of other people might never know the difference.
But Jeez - what IS anybody's problem about this?
So much of the quarreling backwards and forwards reminds me of nothing more than a bunch of schoolkids arguing about the comparative merits of carrot juice over Coca Cola.
By which token - drawing from observation IS like eating your damn vegetables, I guess!
You KNOW it's good for you, you KNOW it makes sense - but that quick sugar rush just can't be beat once it's gotten a hold of your palate, can it......??
"I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft."
Actually i was a puppeteer and member of Puppeteers of America for years. My name used come before Jim Henson's in the directory, just because of alphabetical order. And it certainly helped when designing new puppets or outlining new programs. I don't think I could have designed the puppets I did without an arts background and knowing how to draw and compose.
No, a camera doesn't interpret and understand, and neither does a sheet of paper and a pencil.
Here I simply have to disagree with you.
Objects do not have brains, Fraser, therefore they can't understand stuff. Artists use cameras, pencils, and sculptural devices to understand and interpret content.
What do you do if your reference footage is of a pigeon seen from the front but the director has a change of mind and suddenly you need to animate the damn thing from behind?
You do the same thing you would do if your drawing studies were from the wrong angle: you redraw/reshoot them.
But I don't think you understand how video is used as a reference for 3D animation. It is not usually necessary for the video to document the movement from some perfect angle. A view perpendicular to the motion is probably ideal. The camera within the animated scene can be adjusted later, without the animation having to be redone.
Yes - if you already have a completed CGI model of the damn bird, you can just spin it around. But that's kind of off into yet another argument still, involving the entire process of modeling and rigging and so on and so forth.
You seem to be confusing the design and modeling processes with the animation process. Maybe that's the source of your misunderstanding.
The character designer would be the one who needs to go to the park and draw pictures of pigeons.
The modelers are just following the designers' instructions, the same way painters and decorators follow an interior designer's instructions.
The character animator then takes the rigged character model and moves it around like a puppeteer. This requires the study of movement, and not the study of drawing.
The interpretation comes when the video information is applied to the animation
Woah!! Dude! No need to shout.....!!
(I may be old, sonny, but I ain't deef.........)
Sometimes we use bold text as emphasis, to help thread-skimmers find the point.
I'm sorry if you thought you were being yelled at. :(<--(me sad for you)
OK, well - I guess you happen to inhabit a world that's better-staffed and far more generously-funded than the one I usually work in. I'm very happy for you - and for the "designers" who can lift the 'phone and call up pencil-wielding assistants and add them to the payroll (and add their work time to the schedule).
It has nothing to do with the size of the staff. You seem to just be confusing design with drafting and illustration.
For a character designer, drawing skill is much more relevant, but there are all sorts of designers for whom drawing skill is not important.
If you are the one-man-band type of animator (or designer), then, YES, you need to know how to do it all. You need to write, design, draw, paint, model, animate, composite, and so on.
However, if you work with a team of people as an animator, you need to primarily master movement, acting, and pantomime.
I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft.
OK, well - why not go ask some?
It'll be interesting to hear what they say.
Next time I see any unfamiliar stop-frame people, I'll ask them too (but certaily the ones I already know all draw feverishly and with keen enthusiasm).
I'm not talking about stop-motion or puppet animation. I'm talking about puppetry - as in Pinocchio prior to the Blue Fairy - which is the closest thing to CG character animating that I can think of.
(Animatronics also seem to be similar.)
Let's say the director of a puppet show asks you to make Pinocchio dance a jig.
What do you do? Do you first do drawing sequences of the puppet dancing various jigs, and then pull the strings to make him dance the jigs in your drawings;
or do you simply pull the strings to make him dance various jigs?
Fraser, you've written plenty of false analogies and abstract stuff about why you imagine drawing skill is important to CG animation, but can you give me a concrete hypothetical example?
Let's say, for example, that you are given the job of animating (NOT designing, modeling, or rigging) the Optimus Prime character for the new live-action Transformers movie. http://www.transformersmovie.com/
Let's say the storyboard tells you to animate Optimus changing into a truck.
In this case, how exactly is drawing essential to your animation task?
It's getting WAY too confrontational for me in here
"Fraser, you've written plenty of false analogies and abstract stuff about why you imagine drawing skill is important to CG animation"
Why I "imagine".....?
OK, OK - I'm backing out, Harvey.
You wanna twist it all around like this - go find somebody else's words to squish.
I prefer the kind of conversations, arguments and debates where the pressure isn't on for one person to beat the other one into submission before the bell.
If my analogies are false and my stuff is so abstract - why are you even bothering to refute them at such length and with such apparent gusto and bile?
If it helps to put any kind of perspective on what I've said, Harvey - in 5 weeks' time I'll be starting an MA in 3D Computer Animation, having first of all started out as a traditional 2D EFX guy way back on "Roger Rabbit". I'm 45 and I've been through the mill over the last few very turbulent years, just like a lot of people. I first got involved in animation software back in '93 - and have fought in the traditional/digital wars (at both Warner Bros and Disney Feature in LA).
My own observations and opinions have all been forged by those (and more recent) working experiences - and the experiences of the cool people - from all disciplines and backgrounds - whom I've been fortunate enough to work with (and for). Over the last few years I've done more animation/storyboarding/games design teaching than I would ever have chosen to do (in Scotland, Austria, England and even in Lebanon briefly before all the recent trouble), the larger part of which has been at the invitation of colleges and individual departments who all, in some or other respect, have "run aground" because they've found, again and again and again, that - for educational purposes at any rate - digital modeling/rigging/animation work on its own (like theory alone or any one skillset taken in isolation), unsupported by an understanding of (and a passable proficiency in) observational drawing - is about as much use as a chocolate kettle.
Only last month two design and animation graduates from Northern Ireland asked me to explain and demonstrate to them the fundamentals of hand-drawn, 3-point perspective. Simple stuff. Basic as it comes - but very few colleges on this side of the planet even bother to teach this stuff any more.
Once I'd spent the required 5 minutes with a ColErase pencil, a bit of paper and an old animation desk, sketching out the general idea for them, using one of their original sketches as a template - they returned to the work they were doing, as a team, on designing, modeling, rigging and animating the characters and interiors for their game - with an entirely new (and I hope at least slightly speeded-up, more efficient) appoach to a series of simple problems that they'd been spinning their collective digital wheels with for weeks on end. And they continued to use both stone age and modern techniques (in that order) throughout the remainder of their 10-week project.
If you like (though your weirdly aggressive tone of voice suggests to me that you most definitely would NOT like...), I can bore you rigid with dozens more similar examples, all of them taken from first-hand experience, gained at the collision-point between these different disciplines which, but for the stubbornness of a great many people who are old enough to know better, need never have collided in the first place.
It's been fun hanging out in the Animation Cafe with you guys - but I really don't like having food thrown across the table at me - and for what? For nothing more offensive than speaking my piece according to the facts as I know them, so - I'm off.
in 5 weeks' time I'll be starting an MA in 3D Computer Animation, having first of all started out as a traditional 2D EFX guy
I'm sorry that you keep confusing my arguments with hostility, Fraser.
Bold text doesn't always mean yelling, and a contrary opinion doesn't always signify "gusto and bile."
You're not required to post your resume, or even to have had extensive experience in 3D animation, in order to state your opinion about what you believe is required for animation, Fraser.
However, since you did post it, I looked it over but couldn't find any first-hand experience animating 3D effects, characters, or objects. (It's possible I just didn't look closely enough.)
That's okay though. As far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to speculate about what skills a 3D animator needs, whether you've spent thousands of hours animating, or only seen it at the cinema.
And if, when you take your classes in 3D animation, you find that drawing is always essential, more power to you. :)
However, since you did post it, I looked it over but couldn't find any first-hand experience animating 3D effects, characters, or objects. (It's possible I just didn't look closely enough.)
That's okay though. As far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to speculate about what skills a 3D animator needs, whether you've spent thousands of hours animating, or only seen it at the cinema.
And if, when you take your classes in 3D animation, you find that drawing is always essential, more power to you. :)
It's fun to critique someone else's work, especially when no one else has ever seen yours.
It's fun to critique someone else's work, especially when no one else has ever seen yours.
holy cow, are we back on this again? :)
Anyway, I think the point that everyone's tryign to make is this:
1) There are no shortcuts to being a good animator. it takes time, skill, patience, hard work, and hard work. And then more hard work.
2) Drawing can certainly help one learn to observe. It's not necessary to become a master illustrator, but using drawing to help disect poses and interpret motion is a very useful skill
3) In 3d animation, stop motion, etc, drawing may not be used every day, but it's not a bad thing to have in your back pocket.
1) There are no shortcuts to being a good animator. it takes time, skill, patience, hard work, and hard work. And then more hard work.
2) Drawing can certainly help one learn to observe. It's not necessary to become a master illustrator, but using drawing to help disect poses and interpret motion is a very useful skill
3) In 3d animation, stop motion, etc, drawing may not be used every day, but it's not a bad thing to have in your back pocket.
I agree with all that. In case my point was lost in my arguments that pencils can't think and that design and drawing aren't the same thing, my point is that you don't need to be an expert at drawing to do 3D animation. You don't even have to be really good at it. As a 3D animator, you're not hired to draw. You're hired to animate. Drawing is what they hire character and scene designers, concept artists, and storyboarders for.
Yes, drawing can help you to see, but so can photography, painting, video, sculpture, and just looking at things carefully.
Given the fact that Fraser is an EFX animator, and wants to move into 3D, you have to ask, "How useful is drawing going to be in his 3D EFX animation?"
Let's say Fraser is hired to do the tsunami animation for Perfect Storm 2. He is handed some concept art - a painting of some ocean waves - and told to create an animation with Maya Fluid Effects.
Just how useful is drawing going to be for this type of animation, when you can create an ocean in about a minute, make real-time adjustments, and preview the animation instantly?
I'd hazard a guess and say pencils come out whenever changes need to be made or something needs to be worked out. If you problem solve through drawing then that's what you'll do.
From what I've heard about the industry, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, the "pipeline" flows in various ways. An animator might go back to rigging and say I need this character to do "this". Now you can write them an email what "this" is or you can draw them a picture - or a series of pictures.
Say the concept art of the perfect storm LOOKED great but would animate better if it swelled up in this corner and crashed that way. Before you go too far off track, you might take your idea (sketched out) to the director and say "What about this"? As "instantly" as the computer works, a lot of time and effort can be saved with a quick sketch.
In fact, that's the sole reason I've been given for knowing just a little bit about drawing. It saves time, which then, of course, saves money.
If you problem solve through drawing then that's what you'll do.
With character animation, you can do it through drawing or acting (before a mirror or video camera) or both.
If someone asks you for directions, it's not essential that you draw them a map. You can gesture or explain, "Take a right, two blocks, left."
You can as easily say that effective verbal communication is essential for an animator, but that doesn't mandate a series of courses in public speaking. Acting is much more important than drawing for a 3D character animator (there is sooooo much bad acting in animation), but how many animators do you know that have studied the Stanislavski System?
you might take your idea (sketched out) to the director and say "What about this"? As "instantly" as the computer works, a lot of time and effort can be saved with a quick sketch.
Right, but most people wouldn't need to take drawing classes for that. I think most 9-year-olds with an understanding of the problem could draw a wave with some foam on top and some arrows pointing out the direction.
Right, but most people wouldn't need to take drawing classes for that. I think most 9-year-olds with an understanding of the problem could draw a wave with some foam on top and some arrows pointing out the direction.
And the drawing he'd produce pretty much wouldn't need to exist, because the content would be something easily imagined and not needed to be asked about or recorded. (Not being contrary, just saying the situation might ask more)
And the drawing he'd produce pretty much wouldn't need to exist, because the content would be something easily imagined and not needed to be asked about or recorded. (Not being contrary, just saying the situation might ask more)
It depends on how stupid the animator is.
"Do I need to draw you a picture [to explain something]" is usually a disparaging remark. If the concern is to save time, something can be acted out and verbally explained much quicker than it can be drawn.
I'm guessing (and will be corrected by more experienced 3D animators if I'm wrong) that the very best 3D animators don't need to draw at all. They can clearly visualize it in their noggins.
It depends on how stupid the animator is.
"Do I need to draw you a picture [to explain something]" is usually a disparaging remark. If the concern is to save time, something can be acted out and verbally explained much quicker than it can be drawn.
I'm guessing (and will be corrected by more experienced 3D animators if I'm wrong) that the very best 3D animators don't need to draw at all. They can clearly visualize it in their noggins.
That's an interesting thought, Harvey. It might be similar to some of the older 2D animators weaning themselves off of reference as they found their sensibilities for mechanics developed well enough. As a student I still see planning helping my work, same for most of my teachers (including a 2D/3D hybrid with 20 years and a 3D/stop-motion [I almost wrote S-M...yeesh :D ]) with over 10 years. I'm willing to bet it's half weaning, half "different strokes."
I should note that I'm not switching "drawing" to "planning" but in my case (and in the case of both of their 3D and the latter's stop-mo) drawing was a huge part of planning.
For me, visualization as a 3D animator is a separate process. I'll see it in my head, and build things like thumbs, reference, etc. as needed from that. Then when I refer to those things to animate, I refer back to the initial visualization to see if it's on the money or is suffering from "telephone*" translation.
Scattered how can you build in your head if you don't know the basics.
What makes the best football coach, one that has played the game physically and knows the nuances or one that has only studied the books and plays?
Because I wasn't speaking in sweeping generalization. In the context of what I am talking about, you do know at least fundamentally what you're dealing with and the rest doesn't depend on knowing anything because you're taking things that are more, for lack of a better word, intrinsic and giving them form.
My experience is that drawing helps with all the aspects of animation from boarding to posing.
The more one understands art and drawing- especially observational drawing - the further one can push poses into extreme poses and also that easier it is to understand nuances in acting, and staging (composition within the frame).
I don't expect that many folks who don't draw will understand this- it's like asking an unsighted person to understand images they can't see.
Yes- you may be able to animate (kind of) - but think of what you could do with those extra drawing skills.
I just had lunch with two top notch 3D animators who are from Disney and
R & H - and they said as much - their improved drawing really helped their animation.
All the more reason for a specific drawing, otherwise you're just asking for "that's not what I had in mind" not to mention "That's not what I signed off on". That's the whole reason for Pre-Vis and for Concept Art in the first place, no? So that everyone is on the same page, there's continuity to the story.
How much lattitude are animators given to make changes? What's the difference between adding a special something to bring it to life and what's a deviation from the storyboard?
What's a big change and how are they made in the pipeline? Is it just a discussion or does it need to be signed in triplicate?
I've heard the term "notes" used ... Notes from the producer, notes from the network. Are notes just typed up recommendations or are there sketches (where applicable).
Animation - if it's to trigger a sympathetic response of any kind in an audience - surely ought to share with live action film (and with good prose or songwriting) all the best qualities of observation. By drawing even the simplest quick sketch of a person, an object or a landscape, regardless of the detail or the "finish", we're setting on paper something that begs to be recognised, something that invites a response.
...
Drawing's part of the process of planning too - and anybody who's ever tried to construct and move ANYthing, real or virtual, without thinking ahead, can tell you the value of planning.
...
Top of the pile, though, has to be the question of each person finding and "sounding" their own individual voice through drawing. After all - in storytelling of any kind - we get to the universal via the personal, don't we?
A 3D animator can build his observational skills simply by observing: by watching carefully how things move.
Drawing might not be the best tool for studying and recording movement. Taking video might be better. You'd lose less in translation with video than with a sequence of drawings.
If a 3D animator (CG or stop-motion) has an assignment where he has to animate a pigeon, he might want to take a video camera to the park instead of a sketch pad. Doing drawings of the pigeons probably won't help much, unless he is also designing the pigeon character.
Lacking a well-rounded skill-set means the options in one's career become limited, and this in a idustry that can be notoriously ruthless in pigeon-holing people.
...
In the two decades I've been doing this professionally, I understand the nature of the biz well enough to know that specialization can cripple you.
Naturally if one has more skills, there is a wider variety of jobs he'll be qualified for when the animation work dries up; but one of those skills doesn't necessarily have to be drawing. There are design, programming, video production, ...
Within 3D itself, there is not only animating, but also modeling, rigging, and rendering.
There is all sorts of visualization work which requires design skill, mathematical skill, and sculptural skill, but little or no drawing skill.
Jeane Claude Van Damme once said he wouldn't have become the action star he was during the 80s and 90s if he hadn't taken ballet lessons in addition to his martial arts training. One benefits from the other and can greatly change the other's style.
Maybe that's why his butt cheeks are so tight. I hear ballet is a wonderful toning tool.
Originally Posted by digger I don't get it. How can you be an animator and want to avoid drawing?
It really depends on the type of animation really. It's more a question of choice as to whether or not the individual wants to be able to draw, but it is not necessary to draw if you're going to animate cut-out pieces of paper or moving clay characters.
Personally I love drawing.
oops..I was replying to page1. Didn't see it went on to page 16. However still a think good drawing skills a necessity. What we look for is people who think 3 dimensionally and show this through their drawing. Unfortunately this is rather rare. Good observation and exploring space 3 dimensionally is the key.
Ya but itz not that important...rite? I mean i can draw but itz shit on paper.It helps rite but not a must need for digital animation rite?
Na itz.....rong! (How can someone spell "important" and "animation" correctly, but they can't spell "right"? Oh well.)
Let me put it this way: If I had to hire a 3D animator and - all other things being equal - one could draw and one couldn't, I would hire the one who could. What are you going to do when you have a pose idea and the director commands, "Do a sketch of what you mean"? If you can't sketch, and it comes time for cutbacks, you're the first one on my chopping block.
This isn't to say that you need to be able to draw like Leonardo, but you should definitely be able to sketch a lucid drawing of the character you're animating within a few seconds. If you're going to morph your character's face into a certain expression, you should be able to do a storyboard-quality doodle of that same expression on paper. http://iat.ubalt.edu/courses/old/idia750.085_F02/shrekExamples.shtml
If only i would care less about my future,i wouldnt be so busy.....but wat the heck......so now all i need is a story and a program that works.....rite....
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
1 more thing...... do i need to learn c++ prgramming or any programming to be good in digital animation.cause ive been reading a book on it.Does it really help??
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Maya (3D), AfterEffects (2D raster), Flash (2D vector) - 3 industry standard programs - allow for scripting - stringing together commands for better, faster production.
I don't know anything about C++ so I can't really compare them, but knowing and understanding some of the math behind all the modeling and animation will be extremely helpful. Just like drawing, you don't need to be a master, but you need to know SOMETHING.
Contacts are extremely important. They dry my eyes out and I'm back to wearing glasses ...
...but seriously, the people you meet and talk to WILL be the ones you'll be working with. You have a great advantage starting out so young and everyone I know appreciates hard working, interested kids. If you come off as only interested in money you've just lost a contact especially in this field.
What you really need is to start work and build a portfolio/reel. That will lead to contacts which will lead to jobs.
C++ is a good thing to know, but probably something you won't use much as an animator. And the syntax is constantly changing so if it's something you want to master, go for it. But be aware that you will have to keep it up. But if animation and graphics is your focus there are other things more important. And mastering graphic programs is time consuming enough. If you have limited time at your disposal and you are serious about learning animation. Spend that time learning to draw.
Jobs are won and lost on the basis of portfolios and reels. In the visual arts the employer wants to see what you can do. Check out the show and tell section and look at some of the reels that are presented there.
Take a look at the Daily Sketch section and look at the competition you are facing. Take some time and read some of the older posts here, you'll gain an education. There are some posts on how to prepare a reel, what employers are looking for in candidates.
Take some time and learn about the field you wish to enter. If it something you really want to do you can always wait/bus tables while you build your skills.
Haha....Ok i'll try my best...I'll try to speak normally.But i got one thing to say,I don't live in america but in malaysia.....will that have any effect if i wanna work in america..??
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Probably you'll have to get a work visa, which means an employer is willing to open a slot for you. Which means you need to develop a great reel that will sell your skills.
But from what I understand there is an animation industry developing in Malaysia. You could look for work where you live.
Please, go into your cp and add your location and a little more information about yourself. This helps the rest of us answer questions.
Unless you specifically choose to do hand-drawn animation, no drawing skill is necessary to become a good animator.
Additionally, when hand-drawn animation if the field of choice, there is always a limit to how much drawing skill is necessary. Usually, relatively little drawing skill is needed for 2D animation (see Cartoon Network). The world's most talented drawers can be found illustrating children's books or comic books or making conceptional art for sci-fi movies.
Hi DSB,
Ha ha! Being an old hack myself, I hate those people too!
You said it perfectly here about drawing being a sliding scale. Compare to the best guys, I can't draw but I have an edge over my 3years old son.
Walk in to any 2d studio- big or small, you will find that the best draftman is not usually an animator; the best animator might not draw better than the other animators and your assistants always draw better than you!
If we don't pay enough attention to polish our animation skills as well as our drawing skills. we might find ourselves flipping burgers instead of flipping drawings when the industry goes through changes (it happens!).
-Paul
http://cargocollective.com/paulchunganimation
Maybe I'm missing the point here - or maybe it's a question of interpretation.....
Might it not help to think less about the accomplishment of somebody's drawings (in terms of technical, "classical" or academic prowess) - and think more about what any one of us achieves by the effort of drawing from observation in the first place (as opposed to doodling or sketching from the imagination or from the personal memory bank)?
Animation - if it's to trigger a sympathetic response of any kind in an audience - surely ought to share with live action film (and with good prose or songwriting) all the best qualities of observation. By drawing even the simplest quick sketch of a person, an object or a landscape, regardless of the detail or the "finish", we're setting on paper something that begs to be recognised, something that invites a response.
If you look at James Thurber's cartoons you're going to see a highly personal yet wholly recognisable view of the world, as seen through the artist's own myopic, eccentric filter. OK - he may be no Albrecht Durer in terms of draftsmanship - but "horses for courses".....
Again and again I hear people in the CGI context (particularly in colleges where too often there simply ARE no drawing classes or even any experienced drawing teachers) nervously asking if drawing "matters" - the desired "get out of jail free" response being "No siree - go straight to the bank, collect $200, don't even stop to think, look or commit any ideas to paper....".
Drawing's part of the process of planning too - and anybody who's ever tried to construct and move ANYthing, real or virtual, without thinking ahead, can tell you the value of planning.
Top of the pile, though, has to be the question of each person finding and "sounding" their own individual voice through drawing. After all - in storytelling of any kind - we get to the universal via the personal, don't we?
There's far too much argument and concern about technical ability when drawing's discussed - the important thing here is for people to LOOK at what surrounds them in the part of the world they themselves inhabit (not the world as they find it in tiny, far-away pieces on Google), to think about what they see with their own eyes and to apply all of that to what they're trying to realise, whether it's believability in a bit of performance animation or mood/atmosphere in a layout or background painting.
Or am I indeed missing the original point here....?
FM
No Fraser--I think you are getting the point clearly. My take is much the same: that a lot of newcomers want a shortcut past the intimidating skill of drawing. Even those pros that chimed in with the arguement that drawing isn;t needed have overlooked their own backgrounds--in several cases some have multi-year experience in 2D animation PRIOR to taking on 3D. That kinda slant the debate back in favour of drawing.
I look at it in this way: if someone doesn't want to add drawing skills to their repetoire then more power to them.
I strongly feel they are denying themselves an asset skill that will serve their career, but hey, its THEIR career. The crux of my own arguement in this debate is just that: why pursue a career with only half-assed abilities?
The biz, overall, has a certain level of artistic competence that it asks for--I've long felt it a reasonable thing to demand that of people, and have wondered equally as long why so many aspirants balk ( or are intimidated) at those demands.
Lacking a well-rounded skill-set means the options in one's career become limited, and this in a idustry that can be notoriously ruthless in pigeon-holing people. I was a inbetweener for over 6 years, simply because that was all , was seen to be able to do, that is all I was in the eyes of many around me.
I was lucky to be able to branch out into storyboarding and teaching, but not everyone get's such breaks--more than a few abandon the biz after only a few years.
In the two decades I've been doing this professionally, I understand the nature of the biz well enough to know that specialization can cripple you.
I was encouraged by many mentors ( and personally continue to encourage myself) to cling to the idea of gaining as broad a skill-set as one can.
The clincher to that is that its NOT easy--which is why not a lot of people can (or are willing to) do so. Hey, that's fine, by me, because really all that competition can be a pain. :rolleyes:
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
[QUOTE=Ken Davis]No Fraser--I think you are getting the point clearly. My take is much the same: that a lot of newcomers want a shortcut past the intimidating skill of drawing. Even those pros that chimed in with the arguement that drawing isn;t needed have overlooked their own backgrounds--in several cases some have multi-year experience in 2D animation PRIOR to taking on 3D. That kinda slant the debate back in favour of drawing.
Hi Ken,
I know! Admitting to be a 2d guy did not help my argument at all. I just thought maybe others could see that I wasn't just trying to protect my own kind! The other three animators were bad examples too! Melanie, Jason and Kevan all draw very well and tried desperately to pretend that they couldn't. Unfortunately people knew them and quickly pointed that out. I have to find other victims to help my case!:)
The thread went off topic and became heated partly due to my aggressiveness. I must apologize for that.
It's good to see you and Fraser turn this back to a friendly debate.
-Paul Chung
http://cargocollective.com/paulchunganimation
I'd go for a straight out YES, drawing is important in animation. To deter anyone from failing to try it out. But is it possible to succeed without drawing skills? Yes, there are exceptions for a select few.
Is excellent drawing required for animation? No. Drawing is a form of planning, and I think planning is undisputed to be essential in animation. So a potential animators should not focus on drawing itself, but drawing for animation. Basic perspective, force, weight, breaking joints, line of action. That is the way majority of animators plan their shots, so it should be worth giving it a go to develop your sketching skills. No one should just discard drawing as unimportant just because some people can animate without it. When you have gone the extra mile and have discovered that you can in fact plan better with other ways than drawing, by all means....whatever works for you. I have a feeling that with some practice and exploration, most will turn to drawing as a quick way to get your thoughts out visually. But definitely if you are trying to find a short cut, DON'T. Take up drawing first and see if it helps. But I think drawing is not an absolute criteria for 3D animators, but an asset. Now if you wanted a job as a 2D animator, or an illustrator.....different story. My 2 cents
Quote: (from Harvey Human) [I]"A 3D animator can build his observational skills simply by observing: by watching carefully how things move.
Drawing might not be the best tool for studying and recording movement. Taking video might be better. You'd lose less in translation with video than with a sequence of drawings."
.......
"There is all sorts of visualization work which requires design skill, mathematical skill, and sculptural skill, but little or no drawing skill."[/I]
Hey there, Paul - glad to be thought of as contributing something "friendly"! Are you the same Paul Chung, by the way, who used to work at Uli's in London? Just curious....
Anyway - I'm completely mystified by the above quotes from Harvey. Am I wrong in thinking that the English word "design" comes from the French word "dessin" which, in turn, MEANS to draw?
Even if I'm wrong on the origins of the word - I'd love to know how one can "design" anything without making marks (in any medium, be it on paper or on a tablet/screen) and how, in turn, one can make marks without drawing - unless those marks are purely abstract or verbal.
As for the idea of video footage of pigeons achieveing the same thing as drawing them, I think Harvey's argument is leading us back to the whole notion of Muybridge and the persistence of vision. Yes - the human eye sends information to the brain that we cannot interpret instantaneously. But no - cameras themselves don't interpret or understand - period.
And that, for what it's worth, would be my own point again about drawing as a part of the obesrvation process. Merely capturing a movement is not the same as understanding it. And to animate something well, one has to take the time to arrive at a clear understanding of what one is trying to capture AND communicate. Photography certainly has nothing interpretaive about it - think about all those speed cameras on the UK roads.....
Any device, machine or preson that comes between the individual's own first-hand personal visual experience of an object (or event) and the individual's brain is something which creates both distance and the possibility of confusion or bias. If that were not the case then no editorial power would exist in the hands of news teams covering events with cameras.
Animators would be nuts not to make use of any tools, mechanical or otherwise, which can help them to study creatures or people or natural events which happen too quickly to be seen and "understood" in one go. But that in itself is no argument against drawing either. I'd go so far as to say it's simply an extension of the draftsman's toolkit (not a wholesale replacement for pencils, pens and brushes).
Harping on about the use of cameras (in PLACE of drawing) is simply an argument in favour of impatience in my book. And anybody who's spent any time in animation (in any medium) will, I reckon, appreciate the meaning and importance of the old saying, "more haste, less speed".
And - as Richard Williams repeats again and again in his book - if you don't like boring, repetitive, hard work, what are you doing in animation in the first place? (sorry for the paraphrasing)
If - in sport - one were to argue that moto-cross bikes are faster than running on foot, one would be "right" in straightforward objective terms - but would that necessarily mean that riding a motorbike was "better" than (or somehow the same as) walking or running?
To sum up my own feelings about photography versus observational drawing - I recently had to do a presentation for some games design students, loking at performance animation. I ran two separate sequences without sound - one from "Waking Life" (where the college professor and the young guy are walking along the street while the professor talks), the other from "The Incredibles" (where Bob and Helen Parr are arguing late at night after he comes home from saving people from a burning building.
My point is/was - in the latter you can tell from the pantomime, the distillation and exagerration of the characters' movements, EXACTLY what their feelings are. In the former - even though it's derived from a rotoscoping technique rather than from observational or interpretive drawing - all you can tell is that one character's mouth is moving and the other's isn't.
Simply using a camera to capture movement isn't enough to let you begin seeing and understanding something as you intend to adapt and manipulate it when you proceed to use it as an element in any kind of truly communcative animation.
Cameras CAN be useful. Animators would be crazy not to use them (and just as crazy to ignore what's available on Google). That's not the point.
As for the idea of "design" being a job you can do without drawing - that one REALLY loses me......!
I'd be fascinated to know what on earth "design" can be (particularly as a paid job of any kind in the movie production process) if it involves absolutely no drawing of any kind,
FM
[QUOTE=
Hey there, Paul - glad to be thought of as contributing something "friendly"! Are you the same Paul Chung, by the way, who used to work at Uli's in London? Just curious....
Hi Fraser,
This is friendly compare to some of the more heated arguments that went on here early on. It's all good harmless fun as far I'm concerned.
Yes, it's me! I'm working in the states these days. In fact, I saw Uli in London in July and we had a few pints!
-Paul
http://cargocollective.com/paulchunganimation
Hello
We are talking about expert drawing skills here, not simply "marks."
According to my dictionary, "design" comes from the Latin root, designare, meaning "to designate" or point out, name, signify, indicate, specify, or select.
Word origins aside, one doesn't always need to have great drawing skills in order to design. Often a designer is just someone who picks out some fonts, colors, and shapes. Sometimes a designer will describe a design using text or photographs or physical objects instead of sketches. In my experience, if a designer needs something drawn well, he'll hire an illustrator, or often a team of illustrators.
Anyway, that's off-topic.
No, a camera doesn't interpret and understand, and neither does a sheet of paper and a pencil.
The camera produces a movie which the animator can interpret and understand as he applies the information directly to his animation.
FYI, if we are to believe scientists, persistence of vision is a discredited theory.
We discussed it here:
http://forums.awn.com/showthread.php?t=575
You're saying that photographs can't be interpretations?
I know some photographers and art professors who would disagree with that notion.
Anyway, that's irrelevant, as the camera - in this case - is used more for recording information than for interpreting, and a video can certainly store much more information about the way things move than a few drawings can. The interpretation comes when the video information (or live performance) is applied to the animation.
A 3D character is very much like a marionette. Like CG character rigs, puppeteers also need to learn how to move their marionettes in believable ways. I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft.
Some animators - with their provided storyboards in hand - may be thinking, "Why spend the time doing several pencil drawings of my character when I can move the actual character into those positions in less time and render out a test movie?" I can see how many animators might consider that to be an unnecessary waste of time.
There are many different ways to animate. If drawing works for some animators, and they can do it quickly enough to remain competitive, then that's fine. If other animators find drawing useless to their craft, that's fine also.
Hey there, Paul - greetings from Scotland!
Good to hear the news about Uli's feature getting off the ground.
Now THERE's a guy whose entire studio revolves around drawing - of all kinds. Plus - he's embraced CGI whole-heartedly, bless him (without building a bonfire of all his desks and pencils).
I guess, Harvey, you and I are finding different ways of making arguments which, though they're not completely at odds with one another, run in slighty different directions.
"We are talking about expert drawing skills here, not simply "marks."
Who's "we"?! The very reason I made the comparison between Thurber and Durer was that, in my own view, the most primitive "marks" can be every bit as valid as "skilled" or polished drawings. Indeed - in many commercial instances - rough, spontaneous marks "mean" far more than over-drawn clean-ups do.
What matters is that those same marks are personal, unique in style and substance to the individual who makes them.
" No, a camera doesn't interpret and understand, and neither does a sheet of paper and a pencil."
Here I simply have to disagree with you. The person holding and controlling the pencil (and/or the camera) does the understanding and the interpreting. What I meant (and I kinda think you know this - but we both obviously enjoy wrestling the details!) was that camera footage - as in the specific example I used of the sequence in "Waking Life" - introduces nothing at all which doesn't appear before the lens. Drawing - be it crude or sophisticated - invariably contains something other than a record of those patterns of light and dark which reach the retina of the person making the marks.
And how many times - when one is forced to rely on photographic or digital reference material (moving or still) - is there a frustration because the wrong angle was captured on film, tape or disc? What do you do if your reference footage is of a pigeon seen from the front but the director has a change of mind and suddenly you need to animate the damn thing from behind?
If you yourself drew the pigeon from observation - for long enough to get any coherent marks on the page at all (as with drawing any bird or animal) - then you'll have, in addition to what you saw and recorded on paper, a useful proportion of remembered material which, when supported by a good enough understanding of the rules of perspective and the elementary stuff about avian anatomy, can help you to produce a plausible reverse angle.
Yes - if you already have a completed CGI model of the damn bird, you can just spin it around. But that's kind of off into yet another argument still, involving the entire process of modeling and rigging and so on and so forth.
"The interpretation comes when the video information is applied to the animation"
Woah!! Dude! No need to shout.....!!
(I may be old, sonny, but I ain't deef.........)
"In my experience, if a designer needs something drawn well, he'll hire an illustrator, or often a team of illustrators."
OK, well - I guess you happen to inhabit a world that's better-staffed and far more generously-funded than the one I usually work in. I'm very happy for you - and for the "designers" who can lift the 'phone and call up pencil-wielding assistants and add them to the payroll (and add their work time to the schedule). But I have to say - it's a world with which I'm not familiar, even though I've worked at the scuzzy AND the fancy ends of the market on both sides of the Atlantic.
There must be a quiet (though expensive) revolution taking place somewhere that I'm not party to.
"I don't think many puppeteers would accept the argument that drawing was essential to their craft."
OK, well - why not go ask some?
It'll be interesting to hear what they say.
Next time I see any unfamiliar stop-frame people, I'll ask them too (but certaily the ones I already know all draw feverishly and with keen enthusiasm).
"There are many different ways to animate. If drawing works for some animators, and they can do it quickly enough to remain competitive, then that's fine. If other animators find drawing useless to their craft, that's fine also."
Yeah, well.....I can't argue with that.
It's a free world (although in most studios I know, like I said earlier, it's anything but "free" in the economic sense).
But for me the words "drawing" and "useless to their craft" sit very uncomfortably together.
I do appreciate (I think) the point you're trying to establish and defend here, Harvey - and I know plenty of people who, under the pressures of commercial deadlines, will "cheat" everything they can to get something to work to a passable degree. I include myself in their number.
Indeed - if you don't know how to "cheat" stuff - you're unlikely to survive long in any corner of the industry.
I guess I just believe that - by deliberately or stubbornly avoiding the need to draw from observation (or memory) - the only "cheating" you're doing is cheating yourself.
Sure - plenty of other people might never know the difference.
But Jeez - what IS anybody's problem about this?
So much of the quarreling backwards and forwards reminds me of nothing more than a bunch of schoolkids arguing about the comparative merits of carrot juice over Coca Cola.
By which token - drawing from observation IS like eating your damn vegetables, I guess!
You KNOW it's good for you, you KNOW it makes sense - but that quick sugar rush just can't be beat once it's gotten a hold of your palate, can it......??
Over to you, Harvey.....!!
Fraser
Actually i was a puppeteer and member of Puppeteers of America for years. My name used come before Jim Henson's in the directory, just because of alphabetical order. And it certainly helped when designing new puppets or outlining new programs. I don't think I could have designed the puppets I did without an arts background and knowing how to draw and compose.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Objects do not have brains, Fraser, therefore they can't understand stuff. Artists use cameras, pencils, and sculptural devices to understand and interpret content.
You do the same thing you would do if your drawing studies were from the wrong angle: you redraw/reshoot them.
But I don't think you understand how video is used as a reference for 3D animation. It is not usually necessary for the video to document the movement from some perfect angle. A view perpendicular to the motion is probably ideal. The camera within the animated scene can be adjusted later, without the animation having to be redone.
You seem to be confusing the design and modeling processes with the animation process. Maybe that's the source of your misunderstanding.
The character designer would be the one who needs to go to the park and draw pictures of pigeons.
The modelers are just following the designers' instructions, the same way painters and decorators follow an interior designer's instructions.
The character animator then takes the rigged character model and moves it around like a puppeteer. This requires the study of movement, and not the study of drawing.
Sometimes we use bold text as emphasis, to help thread-skimmers find the point.
I'm sorry if you thought you were being yelled at. :(<--(me sad for you)
It has nothing to do with the size of the staff. You seem to just be confusing design with drafting and illustration.
For a character designer, drawing skill is much more relevant, but there are all sorts of designers for whom drawing skill is not important.
If you are the one-man-band type of animator (or designer), then, YES, you need to know how to do it all. You need to write, design, draw, paint, model, animate, composite, and so on.
However, if you work with a team of people as an animator, you need to primarily master movement, acting, and pantomime.
I'm not talking about stop-motion or puppet animation. I'm talking about puppetry - as in Pinocchio prior to the Blue Fairy - which is the closest thing to CG character animating that I can think of.
(Animatronics also seem to be similar.)
Let's say the director of a puppet show asks you to make Pinocchio dance a jig.
What do you do? Do you first do drawing sequences of the puppet dancing various jigs, and then pull the strings to make him dance the jigs in your drawings;
or do you simply pull the strings to make him dance various jigs?
Fraser, you've written plenty of false analogies and abstract stuff about why you imagine drawing skill is important to CG animation, but can you give me a concrete hypothetical example?
Let's say, for example, that you are given the job of animating (NOT designing, modeling, or rigging) the Optimus Prime character for the new live-action Transformers movie.
http://www.transformersmovie.com/
Let's say the storyboard tells you to animate Optimus changing into a truck.
In this case, how exactly is drawing essential to your animation task?
"Fraser, you've written plenty of false analogies and abstract stuff about why you imagine drawing skill is important to CG animation"
Why I "imagine".....?
OK, OK - I'm backing out, Harvey.
You wanna twist it all around like this - go find somebody else's words to squish.
I prefer the kind of conversations, arguments and debates where the pressure isn't on for one person to beat the other one into submission before the bell.
If my analogies are false and my stuff is so abstract - why are you even bothering to refute them at such length and with such apparent gusto and bile?
If it helps to put any kind of perspective on what I've said, Harvey - in 5 weeks' time I'll be starting an MA in 3D Computer Animation, having first of all started out as a traditional 2D EFX guy way back on "Roger Rabbit". I'm 45 and I've been through the mill over the last few very turbulent years, just like a lot of people. I first got involved in animation software back in '93 - and have fought in the traditional/digital wars (at both Warner Bros and Disney Feature in LA).
My own observations and opinions have all been forged by those (and more recent) working experiences - and the experiences of the cool people - from all disciplines and backgrounds - whom I've been fortunate enough to work with (and for). Over the last few years I've done more animation/storyboarding/games design teaching than I would ever have chosen to do (in Scotland, Austria, England and even in Lebanon briefly before all the recent trouble), the larger part of which has been at the invitation of colleges and individual departments who all, in some or other respect, have "run aground" because they've found, again and again and again, that - for educational purposes at any rate - digital modeling/rigging/animation work on its own (like theory alone or any one skillset taken in isolation), unsupported by an understanding of (and a passable proficiency in) observational drawing - is about as much use as a chocolate kettle.
Only last month two design and animation graduates from Northern Ireland asked me to explain and demonstrate to them the fundamentals of hand-drawn, 3-point perspective. Simple stuff. Basic as it comes - but very few colleges on this side of the planet even bother to teach this stuff any more.
Once I'd spent the required 5 minutes with a ColErase pencil, a bit of paper and an old animation desk, sketching out the general idea for them, using one of their original sketches as a template - they returned to the work they were doing, as a team, on designing, modeling, rigging and animating the characters and interiors for their game - with an entirely new (and I hope at least slightly speeded-up, more efficient) appoach to a series of simple problems that they'd been spinning their collective digital wheels with for weeks on end. And they continued to use both stone age and modern techniques (in that order) throughout the remainder of their 10-week project.
If you like (though your weirdly aggressive tone of voice suggests to me that you most definitely would NOT like...), I can bore you rigid with dozens more similar examples, all of them taken from first-hand experience, gained at the collision-point between these different disciplines which, but for the stubbornness of a great many people who are old enough to know better, need never have collided in the first place.
It's been fun hanging out in the Animation Cafe with you guys - but I really don't like having food thrown across the table at me - and for what? For nothing more offensive than speaking my piece according to the facts as I know them, so - I'm off.
Really - find someone else to pelt, dude,
FM
I'm sorry that you keep confusing my arguments with hostility, Fraser.
Bold text doesn't always mean yelling, and a contrary opinion doesn't always signify "gusto and bile."
You're not required to post your resume, or even to have had extensive experience in 3D animation, in order to state your opinion about what you believe is required for animation, Fraser.
However, since you did post it, I looked it over but couldn't find any first-hand experience animating 3D effects, characters, or objects. (It's possible I just didn't look closely enough.)
That's okay though. As far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to speculate about what skills a 3D animator needs, whether you've spent thousands of hours animating, or only seen it at the cinema.
And if, when you take your classes in 3D animation, you find that drawing is always essential, more power to you. :)
It's fun to critique someone else's work, especially when no one else has ever seen yours.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
holy cow, are we back on this again? :)
Anyway, I think the point that everyone's tryign to make is this:
1) There are no shortcuts to being a good animator. it takes time, skill, patience, hard work, and hard work. And then more hard work.
2) Drawing can certainly help one learn to observe. It's not necessary to become a master illustrator, but using drawing to help disect poses and interpret motion is a very useful skill
3) In 3d animation, stop motion, etc, drawing may not be used every day, but it's not a bad thing to have in your back pocket.
are we done now?
I agree with all that. In case my point was lost in my arguments that pencils can't think and that design and drawing aren't the same thing, my point is that you don't need to be an expert at drawing to do 3D animation. You don't even have to be really good at it. As a 3D animator, you're not hired to draw. You're hired to animate. Drawing is what they hire character and scene designers, concept artists, and storyboarders for.
Yes, drawing can help you to see, but so can photography, painting, video, sculpture, and just looking at things carefully.
Given the fact that Fraser is an EFX animator, and wants to move into 3D, you have to ask, "How useful is drawing going to be in his 3D EFX animation?"
Let's say Fraser is hired to do the tsunami animation for Perfect Storm 2. He is handed some concept art - a painting of some ocean waves - and told to create an animation with Maya Fluid Effects.
Just how useful is drawing going to be for this type of animation, when you can create an ocean in about a minute, make real-time adjustments, and preview the animation instantly?
I'd hazard a guess and say pencils come out whenever changes need to be made or something needs to be worked out. If you problem solve through drawing then that's what you'll do.
From what I've heard about the industry, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, the "pipeline" flows in various ways. An animator might go back to rigging and say I need this character to do "this". Now you can write them an email what "this" is or you can draw them a picture - or a series of pictures.
Say the concept art of the perfect storm LOOKED great but would animate better if it swelled up in this corner and crashed that way. Before you go too far off track, you might take your idea (sketched out) to the director and say "What about this"? As "instantly" as the computer works, a lot of time and effort can be saved with a quick sketch.
In fact, that's the sole reason I've been given for knowing just a little bit about drawing. It saves time, which then, of course, saves money.
Those are all excellent points, Bini.
With character animation, you can do it through drawing or acting (before a mirror or video camera) or both.
If someone asks you for directions, it's not essential that you draw them a map. You can gesture or explain, "Take a right, two blocks, left."
You can as easily say that effective verbal communication is essential for an animator, but that doesn't mandate a series of courses in public speaking. Acting is much more important than drawing for a 3D character animator (there is sooooo much bad acting in animation), but how many animators do you know that have studied the Stanislavski System?
Right, but most people wouldn't need to take drawing classes for that. I think most 9-year-olds with an understanding of the problem could draw a wave with some foam on top and some arrows pointing out the direction.
And the drawing he'd produce pretty much wouldn't need to exist, because the content would be something easily imagined and not needed to be asked about or recorded. (Not being contrary, just saying the situation might ask more)
It depends on how stupid the animator is.
"Do I need to draw you a picture [to explain something]" is usually a disparaging remark. If the concern is to save time, something can be acted out and verbally explained much quicker than it can be drawn.
I'm guessing (and will be corrected by more experienced 3D animators if I'm wrong) that the very best 3D animators don't need to draw at all. They can clearly visualize it in their noggins.
I thought a picture was worth a thousand words?
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
That's an interesting thought, Harvey. It might be similar to some of the older 2D animators weaning themselves off of reference as they found their sensibilities for mechanics developed well enough. As a student I still see planning helping my work, same for most of my teachers (including a 2D/3D hybrid with 20 years and a 3D/stop-motion [I almost wrote S-M...yeesh :D ]) with over 10 years. I'm willing to bet it's half weaning, half "different strokes."
I should note that I'm not switching "drawing" to "planning" but in my case (and in the case of both of their 3D and the latter's stop-mo) drawing was a huge part of planning.
For me, visualization as a 3D animator is a separate process. I'll see it in my head, and build things like thumbs, reference, etc. as needed from that. Then when I refer to those things to animate, I refer back to the initial visualization to see if it's on the money or is suffering from "telephone*" translation.
* The game.
Scattered how can you build in your head if you don't know the basics.
What makes the best football coach, one that has played the game physically and knows the nuances or one that has only studied the books and plays?
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Because I wasn't speaking in sweeping generalization. In the context of what I am talking about, you do know at least fundamentally what you're dealing with and the rest doesn't depend on knowing anything because you're taking things that are more, for lack of a better word, intrinsic and giving them form.
Hello.
My experience is that drawing helps with all the aspects of animation from boarding to posing.
The more one understands art and drawing- especially observational drawing - the further one can push poses into extreme poses and also that easier it is to understand nuances in acting, and staging (composition within the frame).
I don't expect that many folks who don't draw will understand this- it's like asking an unsighted person to understand images they can't see.
Yes- you may be able to animate (kind of) - but think of what you could do with those extra drawing skills.
I just had lunch with two top notch 3D animators who are from Disney and
R & H - and they said as much - their improved drawing really helped their animation.
Thanks.
Larry
web site
http://tooninst[URL=http://tooninstitute.awn.com]itute.awn.com
[/URL]blog:
[U]http://www.awm.com/blogs/always-animated
[/U] email:
larry.lauria@gmail.com
>> the content would be something easily imagined
All the more reason for a specific drawing, otherwise you're just asking for "that's not what I had in mind" not to mention "That's not what I signed off on". That's the whole reason for Pre-Vis and for Concept Art in the first place, no? So that everyone is on the same page, there's continuity to the story.
How much lattitude are animators given to make changes? What's the difference between adding a special something to bring it to life and what's a deviation from the storyboard?
What's a big change and how are they made in the pipeline? Is it just a discussion or does it need to be signed in triplicate?
I've heard the term "notes" used ... Notes from the producer, notes from the network. Are notes just typed up recommendations or are there sketches (where applicable).
A 3D animator can build his observational skills simply by observing: by watching carefully how things move.
Drawing might not be the best tool for studying and recording movement. Taking video might be better. You'd lose less in translation with video than with a sequence of drawings.
If a 3D animator (CG or stop-motion) has an assignment where he has to animate a pigeon, he might want to take a video camera to the park instead of a sketch pad. Doing drawings of the pigeons probably won't help much, unless he is also designing the pigeon character.
Naturally if one has more skills, there is a wider variety of jobs he'll be qualified for when the animation work dries up; but one of those skills doesn't necessarily have to be drawing. There are design, programming, video production, ...
Within 3D itself, there is not only animating, but also modeling, rigging, and rendering.
There is all sorts of visualization work which requires design skill, mathematical skill, and sculptural skill, but little or no drawing skill.
Maybe that's why his butt cheeks are so tight. I hear ballet is a wonderful toning tool.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
I don't get it. How can you be an animator and want to avoid drawing?
It really depends on the type of animation really. It's more a question of choice as to whether or not the individual wants to be able to draw, but it is not necessary to draw if you're going to animate cut-out pieces of paper or moving clay characters.
Personally I love drawing.
oops..I was replying to page1. Didn't see it went on to page 16. However still a think good drawing skills a necessity. What we look for is people who think 3 dimensionally and show this through their drawing. Unfortunately this is rather rare. Good observation and exploring space 3 dimensionally is the key.
Na itz.....rong! (How can someone spell "important" and "animation" correctly, but they can't spell "right"? Oh well.)
Let me put it this way: If I had to hire a 3D animator and - all other things being equal - one could draw and one couldn't, I would hire the one who could. What are you going to do when you have a pose idea and the director commands, "Do a sketch of what you mean"? If you can't sketch, and it comes time for cutbacks, you're the first one on my chopping block.
This isn't to say that you need to be able to draw like Leonardo, but you should definitely be able to sketch a lucid drawing of the character you're animating within a few seconds. If you're going to morph your character's face into a certain expression, you should be able to do a storyboard-quality doodle of that same expression on paper.
http://iat.ubalt.edu/courses/old/idia750.085_F02/shrekExamples.shtml
Juz for yr info,i write short(due to too much chatting)thts y i write wrong.Sooo kk drawing IS important.Now all i need is contacts....
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Amen. My aunt got Lasik when it first got widespread in the area she lived in and she's already having problems from it, not 10 years later. :D
My overly simple answer to the question would be because it teaches you to see what is important.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
If only i would care less about my future,i wouldnt be so busy.....but wat the heck......so now all i need is a story and a program that works.....rite....
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
1 more thing...... do i need to learn c++ prgramming or any programming to be good in digital animation.cause ive been reading a book on it.Does it really help??
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Maybe if you cut back on your chatting, you would have more free time to learn to draw.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Im only 16......i also have a life u know......
@$$
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Maya (3D), AfterEffects (2D raster), Flash (2D vector) - 3 industry standard programs - allow for scripting - stringing together commands for better, faster production.
I don't know anything about C++ so I can't really compare them, but knowing and understanding some of the math behind all the modeling and animation will be extremely helpful. Just like drawing, you don't need to be a master, but you need to know SOMETHING.
Contacts are extremely important. They dry my eyes out and I'm back to wearing glasses ...
...but seriously, the people you meet and talk to WILL be the ones you'll be working with. You have a great advantage starting out so young and everyone I know appreciates hard working, interested kids. If you come off as only interested in money you've just lost a contact especially in this field.
What you really need is to start work and build a portfolio/reel. That will lead to contacts which will lead to jobs.
I'm sorry,what do you mean by portfolio/reel??Does it mean i have good grades or be good at things which are important for Digital Animation......
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
C++ is a good thing to know, but probably something you won't use much as an animator. And the syntax is constantly changing so if it's something you want to master, go for it. But be aware that you will have to keep it up. But if animation and graphics is your focus there are other things more important. And mastering graphic programs is time consuming enough. If you have limited time at your disposal and you are serious about learning animation. Spend that time learning to draw.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Jobs are won and lost on the basis of portfolios and reels. In the visual arts the employer wants to see what you can do. Check out the show and tell section and look at some of the reels that are presented there.
Take a look at the Daily Sketch section and look at the competition you are facing. Take some time and read some of the older posts here, you'll gain an education. There are some posts on how to prepare a reel, what employers are looking for in candidates.
Take some time and learn about the field you wish to enter. If it something you really want to do you can always wait/bus tables while you build your skills.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
K phacker,can u rely on the short hand part in the other 1 (the game production or movie production)cause im stilll dont understand wht u r saying?
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
In "short" drop the chat abreviations. They irritate a lot of us here. Write like a normal human being.
Harvey has already commented on it and you don't want to get on Harvey's bad side!
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Sorry,but i'm used to it....but i can't assure you that i'll write all nice cause i'm still used to the chatting way of typing......
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Be prepared to get razzed or ignored here, if you fall back into it. And in most professional positions it's frowned on.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Haha....Ok i'll try my best...I'll try to speak normally.But i got one thing to say,I don't live in america but in malaysia.....will that have any effect if i wanna work in america..??
Imagination is much more important then knowledge...
Probably you'll have to get a work visa, which means an employer is willing to open a slot for you. Which means you need to develop a great reel that will sell your skills.
But from what I understand there is an animation industry developing in Malaysia. You could look for work where you live.
Please, go into your cp and add your location and a little more information about yourself. This helps the rest of us answer questions.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
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