A Study of Creature Animation in Film and Games

[Music] hey guys thank you for having me back at GGC before we get started guys this has been amazing just putting this together takes so much time and effort then so I just wanna plus for Mike Tim and Lana to put this together guys we started this it was like eight of us now there's 37 you guys should see the email threads that go through and I can't read all of them I would just call Mike in with a cake engine can you just catch me up but the amount of work has been has been fantastic so thanks a lot so studying of creature animation in films and games let me see that works there we go so quickly about myself my name is Joel so do on the CEO and co-founder at t-mobile studios we have a little bit about my background I've got 13 years of experience in the industry before stimulus studios I was working at Rhythm & Hues whether digital and DreamWorks Animation I was an animate an animator and senior animator on The Chronicles of Narnia avatar Prince Caspian few more movies and a couple games as well rise of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex mankind divided I was the animation lead and supervisor on the rise of the apes on young Caesar how junior dragon - on the be able to beast and arcane spray and I am currently working with epic on fortnight and Phoenix labs on topless so - more interesting stuff so game animation feature animation and VFX animation I'm actually holding a pee right now so let's see how this goes and I've never I'm usually never prepared but I had to prepare this time so get that conversation you know regarding game animation feature animation V effects really it's something I've been having you know a lot of discussions arguments everything with a lot of my colleagues and it really started when game when schools started introducing an in-game animation as a class and you know that's been to me I look at look at and it's been confusing a little frustrating as well because especially when I hear students go the label themselves I'm a game animator or I'm a I'm a film animator on my patreon you know I'm a TV animator you know when it comes to to animation the craft itself there is no difference you know when the difference between working on on a game or a film might be the same as difference between working on on two feature films you know animation itself the craft itself and arc is an arc you know a performance the performance and anticipation of anticipation the difference is how you you adapt the craft to the specific project that you're working on the difference between working on a game in the future film can be the same as difference between on on two different feature films for example I forgot to click so anyways and it goes through this real quick so for example working on working on on rise of the Guardians then going into dragons to both future films I found the difference in animation between the two it was absolutely bigger than the difference between working on on on the film avatar which was a VFX film and the game doubtless so my point here is not that we've been wrong - to label or categorize animation but that animation from one project to another regardless of it being a film or game requires the animator to rethink their process find new workflows and adapt their craft to the demands of that project so it's not the animation itself that's different it's everything around it so when when you're learning animation you know the thing you have to know is you have to focus on your craft you have to make sure that you're working as hard as possible to make yourself the best animator not the best game animator not the best film animator or TV animator just focus on the craft itself you will learn the process and the workflow while being on the job you know when I left weather and I went to DreamWorks I did not go to feature animation school you know when I left DreamWorks to go to Steamroller to the games I didn't go to game animation school I'm just an animator I just had to adapt had to learn about how do I adapt my craft to the specific project so you know you one thing I did realize was there is a ramp up time to get you know when you're on a new project like for example on guardians when I moved to Dragons it was a similar wrap of time I had to learn the new team had to learn what all what the director wants the things that I need to do for these dragons to feel alive and though you know when I move into a game it's the same process I had to learn more technical stuff of course because it's a game and I need to learn all the specifics of moving my craft into this new need this new this new field so the next few things I'm going to talk about are very much you know my personal journey and things I've learned in the industry and it's you know doesn't apply to everybody but it's something that I've been lucky enough to have worked in the VFX feature and in the game industry so starting a shot you know in the camera work in the VFX industry you have something called a a live-action plate which is you know you get you get the the film that they shot the shot that they did on on set with the actor in there it's you know it's it has all the details in there that they need that the director wants but no visual effects then they send this to our team and this was when I was already been Hugh's on that the museum and they asked us to actually put you know put characters in there this is an example of what we call a straight-ahead shot not straight-ahead animation stirred a shot it's still playing sorry and you know why the streetlight shot is because you know there is no interaction weave between the creatures and the character that they interaction anything else as you can see the lion do all the creatures jump from behind there and right before they jump onto onto the the cage the shot is cut so that's a straightforward shot and it's actually really rare in the VFX industry that you'd get something like this something as simple and straightforward usually there's tons of complications and I'm going to share one with you guys so the next shot when I show you guys was was a nightmarish shot and actually I've never shown this to anybody because it's embarrassing but I'm going to show you here for the first time and you guys have all seen it if you see in the movie rise of ideas anybody awesome and it's a shot that I was stuck with what I had I'm going to explain it real quickly before I show it to you guys just because I do not have the raw live-action play just have to believe me so in that shot it was under Golden Gate Bridge where buck the gorilla had to pull this guy from the back of this truck and throw him off the bridge so the plan was that when it comes to animation we would actually did you double that the actor and then have the gorilla and CG everything would be CG you guys know what Daily Double is we'll just you know CG the character instead of using the actor and then have the gorilla pull him off the bridge because it's an interaction it is shot where there's a lot of interaction it's really difficult to do so that was the plan but when he got through the animation Department we were at we were told that because of budget because we don't have enough money I'm going to have to use the actor that this shot on set so I'm going to show you guys a shot please know about I said please don't laugh so so anyways we're talking about this shot I swear I can animate I swear so we're going to take a look at it you guys I've seen it I'm going to turn by ourselves we're going to show it in slow-mo let's see why doesn't work so this guy when he was when they were shooting him on set they would actually they tied him up with a they attach a cable to his back and instead of pulling him out of the truck they lifted him up because they didn't care was just there to be temp it was just an idea you know just to give just for the length of the shot because they thought they were gonna did you double that but when it came to us and they told us to do this like alright so how am I going to do that I need to have the gorilla pull him out but no he's not going to pull him out he's going to lift him up so when you look at the shot very at the very beginning he doesn't get pulled he gets lifted up so there's no anticipation to the gorilla he basically lifts the guy up there is no motivation for him to do that there basically is no physics whatsoever and when the guy who is halfway through watch what happens the guy flipped the guy spins because he gets lifted up you can totally see because they tied the stupid guy with only one cable usually when you do something I did you tie him up with a few cables so you control him in the air but no one cables of course the stupid guys going to spin so I have to figure out how I'm going to make him spin and my gorilla holding on to him I tried to have him hold his legs that didn't work because there was no dragon his leg so the leg spins goes through the gorilla yep it does and then when he throws him he can't dress usually you would drag somebody there'll be a lot of drag physics to to the character but no he I had to make him push the guy worst thing was I had to make the girl like jump because the guy was so high up watch this the girl I would leap up in the air because that's what gorillas do they love jumping and so yeah there's no physics there's not service though anyways this is embarrassment to my career but I'm showing it to you guys and no one will ever see that again and when I show this in my demo reel this is all I showed pretty cool no one knows so this is basically an example of you know what can go wrong when you know you you're working on something that that that you know is not well planned on set because they had it well it was planned they had it plan but it didn't work out and you have to do with these things so in feature animation you you don't have live action plates right you actually get you know storyboards you know yeah you you don't have for the most part you do get animatics or layout work but I mean you get animatics and layout also in VFX but usually because you're tied to the camera and to the plate you don't have the freedom to do whatever you want so but the good thing about VFX is there is a guide you use that that place libation plate as a guide any future animation you don't have so much as a guide in terms of plate but you do get layout work that is studies sent to you so in future animation you get a bit more freedom of course because you don't have that live-action plate but that has its pros and cons you know you're not limited to a live-action plate the camera and layer Department will do that for you so these are images actually of storyboards and you know because the boards were reading so well we actually try to match it in the film the top one actually they're both marching a dragon to and where we try to you know with this with the the characters and the compositional in animation we try to really match that you know these boards so the next one I'm going to show you guys is screen girl is an example an example of of what freedom allows you to do especially the freedom you have in feature animation we're not stuck to a specific camera so I got this shot you know to - - like the only Monday I get that shot and in this shot basically there is Astrid jumping on the back of her natter and the intent of the shot was to make Astrid look really cool so I get that shot and I spent about an hour on it I put some you know some wing to bids the basic wind flap in there and kind of linearly have Astrid jump up you know there's there's no animation on this is just blocking and then I show it to the director and the camera department to show that this is not really working we look at it because usually the intent of a shot is what you want to to succeed at if the shots are part Astrid being cool no one cares about how cool the animation is Astrid needs to look cool so it needs to work really well so what you guys do here is you actually looking cool you barely can see here barely can see her she gets cut off at the end you don't even see your head so that wasn't working so the framing was off so I tell the director okay I'm going to do it pass at it where I could try to walk her on camera so of course I need you know I need a blessing from the camera department and they tell me yes I can do that now I lock him on camera so at the end you like clear what that works you see her well not really because she gets cut off really quickly at the end - you can see you see her and then she's gone so the shot was actually too short so now they're like okay we need to extend a shot I can't just go and extend it myself because I'm going to messed up with the addition of the edit so what they do is they tell me hey do a quick little path extend the shot and then send to the camera department and they'll do what they'll do what they're good at yeah right so no they're good at it so anyways I do a tweak to it extend the shot myself of course there's no animation to it it's just the camera extended and I show the camera department hey this is what I think this is the lens that I want so let's make this let's make this work they do their past at it that's turning back to me and I tweak my animation to actually work more with the shots and now you see this you're like oh yeah you get some more time to see her so we actually did that back and forth you know many more times maybe two more times and we kept bringing a closer to the camera to actually read her expressions and in the end you know it looked like this in the film because we had way more we've added about 19 more frames to this so she can get closer to camera so this is the type of back and forth between animation and camera and the camera department that is very common in the future animation you know in the future animation but something that is very very rare in VFX you know you stuck to the live-action plate so that's said in games especially for in game animation you know when you're launched on it on a game you get this and that's it so well no you actually give the character as well you know you would get a character in there and and this is a blank Maya scene if you guys don't know why these my eyes the tool a lot of animators used to - for animation you guys all know what my eye is I'm sure awesome I'm an idiot and and so you don't get you know storyboards or animatic you know you you get but what you do get though you get a little description of what you're supposed to do so for example you get to make a winged flash out of this like awesome as an animator now you look at this you're like wait I don't have a camera I'll have a live-action plane I don't have storyboards this is this is practically whatever I want but no you get that attack will be 150 frames long anticipation needs to be 60 frames the wing needs to open around frames 30 the slash needs to last for 40 frames the slash needs to be to do a spin for 360 the last pose of the slash needs to hold for 20 frames and the creature needs to settle during the last 30 frames put it crazy you get exactly what you need to do for this to actually work so you know you don't have free rein you know because in games it's not animation that rules actually game design it needs to actually work so actually this this creature is the is is a behemoth from the from the game doubtless that is being launched you know midway through the year and I'm Simon longer who's Simon where you're at is one of the animation supervisors there and the game basically will have lots of creatures in there lots of VMs in there and the wonderful team at Phoenix lab partner with us but stimulus studios to actually bring these creatures to life so check it out when it comes out it's going to be awesome so for for this next animation we were to make this creature called the strike land from a flying pose so you know and and if you've worked in the VFX of film industry or feature animation the chances of you doing and landing or with taking off with flying anime character is actually huge every movie now has a flying creature so you know I've done flying before and and we had to do this one for example when I was on Avatar I had to do you know this shot where where the Banshees you know lens comes out materials been cheap and there's one thing about this shot is there's a lot of cheats in this shot because like I said I was it was I had a camera to work with I had a plate to work with and I had to you know I had a lot of guys I have a huge guide to work with so when if you look at this shot from the side it actually doesn't work because this creature is way too big to be landing that fast because he comes out really faster and you just stopped and start to land I didn't have much time but you don't always notice it because I had to do you know some cheats I mean the distance between a tree and the branch land was way too short so what I did is I exaggerated the up-and-down of that character's chest a lot of up and down probably more than I should have to kind of you know trick the audience into looking at something else instead of the fact that he just stops immediately so there are cheats you can do because you have a still camera and you can animate to the camera so you can do this cheat and that happens all the times maybe in VFX or feature animation so you can get away with things but when it comes to games you know you do not have this this this luxury you know for the strike undaunted we didn't have that that chance to actually you know cheat Josiah massingill I will be done on dauntless you know how to make sure it works on all angle and why that was cool is because we're able to use that same animation in the trailer and that's something we would not have been able to do if you know we didn't make sure it looks good from every angle so that's um that's really cool you know sometimes in games you can get away with you reusing the animation because it looks good from from different angles so the next thing I want to talk about is is how important the rigging department is you know we've animation readers and animators our other best of friends actually not all the time but it's it's it's really important for for for you know for animators and riggers to actually nurture this relationship and Jared Snover at DreamWorks one of the best animator bernal best burgers I've ever worked with and I would never forget when I was launched on on the be wildebeest I was called to Simon Otto's office my animation director and he said hey drover we need to do a test to show Jeffrey Katzenberg and you know we're going to see the Builder beast for the first time I think oh that's great you know I'm excited about this I didn't know that the rig was ready was all yeah and the rig is not ready I was like so okay so you want me to do a test to show the boss to sell a dragon to him and the rig is not ready and he needs to like it I like I love my job I don't want I don't want to get fired because you'll be fine you'll be fine okay so I run to the riggers and I'm like okay guys so we need to do this be able to be test can we do that it's awesome to work with a team of riggers that will say yes to everything there will be a scare of course we can oh yeah I'm like oh yeah but the body isn't ready we only have the head I think the only the head is rig that yes actually the jaw is broken and the eyes are broken like come on I do this God will be fine and we'll just fix the head for you and fix the fix the jaw and pick the eyes you'll be fine like alright so it's great that you know the big can do that because they worked all night got the rig ready for me the next day and so my point is here is that not always on the rigs ready especially in future animation so after a few days I was able to do tests with it as you can see it's a neck neck is broken the spikes are broken legs don't work but I used the head the jaw whatever I had to quite to kind of sell the animation and we showed it to Jeffrey and he liked it and I did lose my job so it you know this is my point here is that in feature animation there's usually more are in the time you know the early teams get to do performance tests with the rough rigs and usually all the animation using this test are never seen on screen so but the great thing is that you get to know your character really really well when you have so much time in game it's kind of similar in some ways because you the animation the the production time is actually longer than in VFX because you usually approach things in iteration you know you get to sometimes do get unfinished rigs to work with and then they update the rig then you have to redo the animation just like that in VFX rigs tend to be further along when you start your animation VFX studios are used to faster turnaround you know the downside is that usually you don't have enough time to do R&D the effect Studios also work on more projects that they need it much better you know straightforward streamlined a rigging system sometimes VFX 2 years would take on similar projects back-to-back you know for example on narnia and at the museum we actually used almost the same rig that we use on as land then the Lions are not a museum now many people know that hey now what do the men use is closed down so they can't sue me anymore saying so I mean I love with doing news you know so anyways like that so in VFX timing is based on on performance on a one staying feature over there get something wrong all right maybe I'll keep going so in VFX timing is based on performance but limited to short length why is this maybe what that means is I'm going to keep going guys sorry I cannot slide might be off what that means is oh you know what because I already talked about that I'm going to fast forward this damn dinner any questions so far no okay so in VFX I mean is timing is based on on performance but limited to shot length what that means is the focus is still on a great performance but your animation needs to be done within the length of the live-action plate if we talk about earlier it featured timing is based on performance like we spoke about earlier but shots can be extended you know when when you need it but there is a huge con to that to having the freedom of time and you know in short length sometimes there's so much so much focus put on performance that important information is you know all overlooked so that board which I showed you guys earlier when you look at these storyboards actually when you look at the framing at the top the framing is actually better than what I did in my animation and the reason for that was because you know the director really wanted us to make sure that we can focus on the eye of the be wildebeest when it comes out of the water so I'm gonna show you that shot and you see what I mean so this was the shot of the B wildebeest came out of the water and the director was like okay we need to spend a lot of time yes my mouse oh no you can't okay when the creature comes out the screen right eye needs to be clear that he actually looks but he actually looked at Drago because Drago is you know he's showing where he needs to go but this shot was difficult to do because it was very busy you know there's a lot of stuff going on in this shot don't know it's go play and I had to make sure that I make you know I tone down on the rest for example to now Andre go a little bit make sure the boat does it cover the eyes what it needs to is it playing no it's not and so we spent a lot of time on this shot to actually make sure that it works I don't know why it's not playing guys apologize about that and you know I spent probably about two weeks just back in four just to make sure all that stuff is where all the timing is there and then you send that shot to the effects Department and that's what came back yeah so right there is where I spent most of my time on right there right there when you supposed to be looking at Drago so that's example of how much time we spent on trying to treat the eye to make it read and guess what they took the boat out as well and I didn't realize it until the guys I didn't realize I want to watch the film until the guys at work was like hey they took the bird I was like took the booze now sons of so you know the effects Department everybody's trying to show off this is another example this is the people DB is going up and what I wanted to do here is really you know put some jiggle in that jaw you know when to be rubies lands down right there because I want to show wait this thing is really huge son it's the effects Department comes back looking like this but oh there is some oh no you just crashed on me do that again oh no oh yeah just crashed control of duty does that work I'm just going to stand over your shoulder and come like I'm helping yeah I got this do that one now yeah got it how much time do I have I really cook quickly through it oh let's see we were right here okay cool so and it came back like this there's all the jiggle in the jaw fantastic Jalil well done this is another one where I wanted to put a lot more jiggle in the jaw because yeah the director was like next sell the impact is make sure this man that is really powerful like I got this because the effective art department comes back yeah we don't need to see it again nothing to look at the next one is my magnum opus this is the one we actually spent a long time on make sure that you know actually 2d defects of the effects Department can follow this get all the little jiggling ham you know make sure all the dragons shooting at him it's selling all the impact spent two weeks on this so happy with the shot I was coming along and setting to the effects Department comes back with this I'm going to write a book about how I've been screwed by the effects department and guys should buy it's going to make a lot of money so I think it's a bit for now this is the the first half I got a sequel I fix the clogging and so be here we have some more stuff to talk about and I will do a Q&A as well thank you very much alright so this is really where all right so timing and performance so in games timing is based on gameplay extending an animatic extending an animation depends on the game designer all animations are very specific have very specific timing so what I'm going to show you guys right now is actually from the game dauntless and what you're seeing is what we should be playing so I'm just crashed I think you might need to restart it sorry guys any questions so far I seriously any questions he's left to restart it okay we're going to do this it's going to be great I'm gonna do a little song in it I don't know I saw your face Oh so name is Shane right yeah so the question was the concept of swingset do we do something that we actually did we actually did not do what he did which was awesome because I'm going to take this idea now I'm going to do that at the studio as well animated through thing was fantastic but we do have like the themes and phonemes that we go through we do all the shapes and actually Mike will talk about that during his talk which we worked with the volition on ages of mayhem who actually did some of these faces but not take your idea dude yeah yes yeah it's something that we actually fell into the question was we stimulus to do is where I'm at right now we actually have a law we're working a lot of bigger studios to do all of the animation not all that emission we're helping them with their with their with the animation work and it's something that is kind of new because outsourcing has always been around but in-game especially it's always been in-house but they're discovering now because games quality of games actually getting better and better and better people are starting to realize what maybe we do need help you know with other teams because it's difficult to hire a bunch of animators and then maintain that you know sustain the amount of work for a long period of time so it's a lot of money just to bring in 20 animators just for a few months then lay them off so what they do now a lot bigger studio is actually doing this they actually the finance stood you out there a self-contained unit team that is that they can do that they can just be numb to have 67 animators they can dedicate to another project when we've done this with Dom lists with Phoenix lab with epic on fortnight we pray on arcane and with also agents of mayhem as well and I don't know if that's the future of it but it's definitely working out for us yeah yeah absolutely yeah I was laughing when I saw because that's that's something that we do a lot at DreamWorks I would actually because it's so fast to do that you don't have to go in it go in a room and shoot reference I actually would take my little figurines and just film it you know doing doing an action I would take on rise of the guardians for Jack Jack Frost flying actually use real ninja turtles to just make him fly I have to find the shot somewhere but I just had that you know I've got the timing right with my hands I just animated it because with your hands you can get the timing that you want yeah good question yeah I'm actually going to talk about that in a second cool all right so so so this video which I was going to talk about is what you're seeing here is a gray box version of an animation and we're going to use the the behemoth from dauntless called amber main and what we do is we find we find a motion that will actually like we get a timing that will actually in that were actually feels right to us by just animating this little box right there it's not playing anymore but when I keep going to keep going and when this when we like this we like this timing then we actually go in and block it and what we do is we keep it in step mode which is what you're seeing right now where it's wicked we get to focus on the actual poses we don't worry about blind for now and for this character you know the team at pings lab what they they really wanted us to to get a lot of personality in these creatures you know when somebody was just talking about personality earlier hence why we did the little the few little steps you know because we knew amber main would be a stalker he would try and follow you so we did that when this gets approved then we go on and we spline it and then that version we actually send it to the game designers and when they would take this and put it put this in the game the thing is you know I remember that meeting with Simon and his team and they we can't come back to us and be like yeah Jahlil the amount of time that he's stalking this first few steps would allow the player give the player a chance actually run behind him and attack him so we had to change that I said hey can you make that faster so we went back to the drawing board while not really back to him but we went back and sped that up set it back to them to take a look at it and it was still too fast so we went back and forth a couple times then we realized we can't actually keep that part of the animation again like I said animation doesn't matter how cold your animation is it's based on game design and game play so in the end it just ended up being something like this where we took out the whole you know stalking move which was really cool but what what ended up happening was the game designer who is super cool to work really and he looked at it like this this talking movement we can cut that into in and then use that somewhere else so it shows that even animation can influence game design if they see something cool they can think about where can I use this and you actually can work so that was something that worked out really well for us next so making creatures believable is something that I've been you know talking about a lot and I think that will answer your question so one common aspect of the process of animation is is you know how do you make a creature believable and that's that's crucial and there are no secrets to that you know all creature animators will do it in different way and but not every creature animations actually exactly is actually successful so how do you imagine that was your question I think how do you imagine the motion of something that doesn't exist well you relate it to a creature or animal that actually exists and you know that can take time and in VFX usually that takes longer because usually the director in VFX films are not in-house so you have to do something try something out and then send it to them sometimes could take months on Avatar James Cameron he was in LA for the most part it would take so it would take a long time for us to get approval on something but in feature a dreamers for example the director is always there is announced and you would do something on dragons too we would do a dragon he's right there he looks at it he likes it oh he doesn't like it you keep working on it it was much faster to get something that actually works so part of the of the planning is to pick the animal or the Cree or the character that actually can inspire your creature take toothless for example you guys know toothless my dream dragon you know the reason why to place you still love these because it's a mixture of a cat and a dog you know pets that we can all relate to most of toothless and the first dragons film was actually cat and while most of toothless and the second dragons film was actually a dog you know because in the first film toothless is the mysterious you know human killer but in the second film he is the best friend of hiccup so hence the choice you know for a dog crew so as well from the film which most of you haven't seen the water hose no one has seen that movie but it was it was really fun because we use the same thing you know we actually use puppies you know for for Crusoe and NCN seals and we mix that together and it was probably one of my favorite you know a character to work on was that little guy because he was a little puppy and we made him cute too so the audience can connect with it again you know these the Loch Ness monster doesn't exist but that was something that we decided to go with his use pets that people can relate to the bouillabaisse from How to Train Your Dragon 2 you know they were a serious challenge because definitely from the opposites on the opposite spectrum of of toothless you know toothless is mostly puppy cute cuddly but the Buddha bees were massive majestic threatening again this was another creature that that I had no idea how we would move but you know and or what reference that I would use so you know I knew it had to be big you know it was a monster and but still it had to feel like an animal so the good B would be for the king proud you know powerful the bad build beast was the tortured soul the injured the injured animal and the director Dean really wanted it to feel like it was the king of the Dragons against against the cage sole so it was nothing hard to relate to them but the fact that Valka and the other dragons had so much respect for these two dragons it was enough to actually you know connect with them so for the battle for the battle sequence which took me about you know five weeks to to animate the bit we wanted the to bill degrees to feel like two mountains you know fighting each other and you can see you know we use different animals we couldn't find one we use you know polar bears and big horns for that first part we use bulls and buffalos and and and moose you know to actually do the locking the horns we use the elephant seal to to you know for the end of the neck attack you know I would do reference all the time just looking at all these animals for this twist you know I use the grizzly bear you know attacks for that it was a mixture of all these animals that we can that we've seen before we can relate to and you know it's you know that sequence took me about five weeks to do and by the time this was done I was completely you know exhausted because it took the life out of me but in games now we do very similar type of reference work you know we would this is again from the game dauntless but you know being done by the team at Phoenix labs and we you know we treat creatures with the same care and as much attention to detail as we do in films this is something that more that is more common today because of the high quality of video games you know five years ago you would it would be rare to see subtle shakes in the creatures head Barrio tail nowadays we want characters and creatures to in our games to match to match you know those in the effects or feature animation so for dauntless you know we apply in everything we've learned from the film industry we're not shying away from a good performance we want these behaviors to feel alive we want the players to feel that they are hunting creatures with real personalities force right you know we use a land bear obviously you know for for oh and eagles you know for the wings and also cats for some of the locomotion for amber main we use mostly you know big cats for pegar we use their birds you know and also Jurassic Park we use Jurassic Park as reference yes with you so the length of time of animation the amount of time that that C so time management is incredibly important you know in future animation you are allowed more time to do more research like I mentioned before usually you know a feature animators tilma leverage between 30 and 80 animators depending on where you were depending on where you work for example the DreamWorks would be 40 animators on the film and Disney could go up to 70 animators in VFX usually they would end up with 80 animators but they have really short deadlines so it's very very strict sometimes they were good over 100 as well in games you know you know they have longer production time as well but on average you'll get about seven animators that if you're lucky on one production inventory dog they have 40 that that brought my my theory but for the mirror most game companies would have a small amount of animators it's more developers more designers more programmers and less on the animation side hence your question when you know instead of hiring a bunch of animators they try to add sources to outsource it to two different places so the last shot I'm going to show you guys oh yeah forgot I have to go through that so the last shot I'm going to show you guys is it's a shot that you know it's an example of how having too much time sometimes can be a bad thing if you don't manage your time really well so when we're going to watch a shot and I got that shot that was a shot that I got right after I did the battle between the to build a beast and right after this shot I was going to jump onto the battle between the buildings and toothless and so it was two huge shot sequences I was supposed to do and then in middle I was waiting for the sequence to be ready I get this shot and they told me that I had two weeks to do it I was like two weeks into the shot so like yeah two weeks I was like okay that's awesome and I didn't want to ask them any questions because I'm like I can do that in a day this is this is awesome I got two weeks to do this so I go back to my desk it but I did ask I was like there's nothing else oh yeah there'll be some background dragons and clouds will take care of that all that great so I don't have to do anything so I didn't have any more questions I went back to my desk and I said wow I can go home early I can you know relax on this one so I would basically you know key the head move the head around watch some YouTube videos walk around get some coffee to some friends come back to my desk and head does it look good move the head again key it some more YouTube videos I did this for four days and I get a call back I get a call on Friday and my production manager is like so what are you showing your shot I was like ah Monday so week is gone they're like Monday okay well you don't have to show all of the baby dragons just just you know show just a couple if you have them done how about about baby dragon there were seven baby dragons in the shot I didn't know and so I was like okay yeah I'll show them on Monday I was terrified and I sat down my desk I was cold and my buddy said t walks by and goes dude what's going on I'm like dude I've got seven dragons to do and I've got yeah five five and a half days goes seven that's about 1.4 dragons a day you're dead so I was like he's like okay listen dude what you do is have fun with this shot and if not you will go insane so well that's why I learned from this shot was you know having fun whatever you do is incredibly important because you think work in movies is fun yeah it's fun but there are days where you just don't want to be there and you need to force yourself to have fun and there are ways to do that and on this shot I learned how to do that so what I did is for the next 225 days I just sort of building cycles similar to what I would do in games so I used like you know I wasn't games that time I haven't done games that time but I used similar ways of doing things that would build little cycles I'd build a little flap cycle a little tail cycle a little Idol and I would populate my dragons my baby dragons with that and then put them on be able to be some blend in them in between so in three days I had six dragons to show so these were you know super simple in there you know just simple cycles I had to animate the you know the the end of the shot where they were flying off of course I was a little more manual but I showed it on Wednesday and then I had you know a couple days to to finish the rest so what I did though was have fun with these characters I told myself I've got one point for dragons a day and I had to have fun with each of them for example the bottom guy the bottom guy on the right he's trying to pee and he doesn't have a chance because the wheel to be stands up the one right above he's licking the people degrees because he has cravings for salt the guy right above him he's actually teething so you see he's actually biting you know the eyebrows once flying in front of his face the two on the Left we're trying to go for a nap but they can't one tries to bite the other guy and then there's one more little guile if you get see my mouse but he's up above the tusk he shows up right there oh no you see him again watch watch for it he'll show up right there little guy there you name it Tobias he's always actually massive and I won't aim I wanted to I wanted him to showcase in the whole battle when he falls off but I didn't have time to do that but the lighters were really cool because they saw the dragon they came to say hey you have a dragon random dragons not random dude he's got a story the reason he's back there one so they actually put some lighting there so that you would see the dragon in the end because if not it would be all dark and it wouldn't see him so you know that's that's where it is having fun make sure that that's the thing I learned is from this shot was make sure you ask questions if you have too much time to do something there is a catch somewhere don't watch YouTube videos just animate and and make sure that you know you you you have fun whatever you what you do because you're there for reason and animators know if it can get difficult even though it's a fun job it's still stressful that's it for me thank you very much [Applause] any questions yes good the creature design oh man sorry the question was uh sorry Kiki vision ha Wow how often is it that animation effects the creature design that we have to go back and redesign the creature well that's that's rare I've never happened to me you know often it maybe it happens maybe with a cactus tail if you the tail feels too big the might but it takes so long to build a character and then and then rig it to get to animation then go okay that design is not working there's a huge flaw somewhere there and usually it's whatever they'll give us the animals job is to find the right reference for that creature to work it doesn't exist you make it up but usually the other way around I don't know anybody you know you guys have that happen to you I don't think it happens if not there's a big problem in the pipeline somewhere by design goes all the way to animation but in terms of personality yes that does happen for example discovering a character maybe the original idea of a creature just gets you know altered when you get to animation you start discovering that's what this creature will do maybe the designers had an idea for example the wildebeest the modular design him to be standing in a certain way but when I intimated they might didn't make him stand that way because I didn't feel it was right and just stand that way so yeah that does get changed but not really the actual design yeah good question last question can you talk about I also come from a visual effects and feature animation background yeah you talked a little bit about have it building cycles that will transition from one to the other or you one to any of another that's something in visual effects or feature film that you can always you have you can hand animate but you have to you talk a little bit about yeah yeah do I have a repeat question no okay okay good so the question so how okay so your question was how do we do cycles and the effects as well and yes we do and we actually do that early on depending on how much time you got in a film on a movie like Avatar which took three years to make like seven months out of that is just you know character development where you would animate cycles you would figure out how a character would you know fly would figure out how how the senator would run because that's six legs and it was all about building these cycles that eventually we can reuse when we're blocking our shot usually use it when you're blocking your shot you can reuse some of that cycle for crew so for example and water horse I did do is a walk cycle because a lot of my shots had walking in there instead of reanimating every time I would do a cycle that I would reuse on or Nia we we did we had a year and a half to do it so we had more a little bit more time but on movies like rise of the apes we had eight months to do that and was Planet leave sorry we have eight months to do that we didn't have too much time we did some personality tests but we didn't have time to actually do a lot of cycles in games where you know we do that you know every day so yes you do do that when you have time in VFX land Feature animation but not so much all the times because of it all depends on time how much time you've got hopefully answer your question thanks a lot guys [Applause]

Channel: GDC

Views: 37,398

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, how to train your dragon, dawn of the planet of the apes, planet of the apes, Avatar

Id: tBz7LlbvXFI

Length: 51min 15sec (3075 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2017