Tips for Polishing Animation from a Disney Animator

a lot of times when I'm doing the face I'll start with the jaw specifically for dialogue and I'll make sure that jaw rotations are like working perfectly in student work the polishes isn't there I think one thing that you can do is to just what's up everyone welcome back to how to become an animator I'm sorry and today we are talking about polishing your animation with our special guest Hey I'm Alan ostagar I am a character animator at Disney yeah talk about polish all right let's do it some of my projects I've worked on is our Zootopia Moana a Las frozen adventure like her off to think that's it yeah yeah so I've been at Disney for about a little more than three years and you got in through the apprenticeship yes I started as a trainee in the talent development program and that was right as big hero 6 was finishing up do you ever do any like picture of six Tests as well as you got into that or do you know yeah we actually some of the tests that I use were with some of the frozen characters because big hero 6 hadn't come out yet so they didn't want us to be using those characters in our tests so awesome yeah I don't know how best to discuss polish but it's the first thing we should say like what what do you consider polish yeah within the whole like blocking and everything else like where do you kind of set the boundaries so for for polishing usually I mean at work it's at the point where I've shown my blocking and I've gotten it approved and the acting ideas are already there and they're working and it's the point where I just need to take it home you know bring it to 100% you know which is kind of can be really hard because it's like it's like the last part of the marathon you're like oh I gotta finish it's like I've been looking at it for so long but to finish strong and like get all those details in there to really sell the performance and the physicality and make it look great and beautiful how long do you usually have for that portion of it it depends yeah it could be anywhere from you have the afternoon to polish it to you have a week to polish it dip it you know just depending on how many characters you've got and how long how many frames the shot is what can you accomplish in there in an afternoon well if it's like a if it's like a take you know if the shot is just a carrot going hmm you know it's like you can you have one day to do the whole shot you know or two days to do the whole shot and from start to finish if it's you know a thirty frame shop or less I was thinking like three characters you got you got the day if we go ahead and finish it up no no no maybe in yeah not in the feature so once you hit like like cool time to polish look whether it's someone tells you you're good go ahead and just finish it up or you decide like what what happens next yeah so from that point something I'll do before I really get into the details of playing in the graph error like getting into the graph editor and really tweaking the curves and and finessing arcs and things like that before I do that a lot of times I will I'll kind of look at the shot overall and see if their places in the shot that I can maybe like take a frame out of an action to make it a little bit quicker so just it doesn't feel you know so it feels you know snappy or if it needs that and then yeah so maybe like robbed a frame from one action and make another action take you know give that frame to another action just to kind of like play with subtle things and timing I'll usually do that before I really start getting into the like policy stuff because it's kind of like your last chance to do some timing yeah you know I mean the earlier you get that that kind of things that those kind of things adjusted the better so that you don't have to re fix arcs and things like that yeah and you have like a list of like I don't things you need to hit in a certain or yeah yeah a lot of times when i'm when i am i okay i need to polish this shot i will actually write down a checklist like sometimes you don't have time to polish everything that you'd like to so i'll start with the most important things first and i'll actually like make a checklist a lot of times from the hips outward so i will i'll look at what the body is doing and what and where the hips are going and i will kind of like track the arcs that it makes and i'll adjust the spacing and the timing of that and then once that is working really well it's working in clean arcs and I look at my graph editor and and make sure there's nothing crazy happening that shouldn't be I'll move forward with that and then I'll also sometimes I'll look at the camera view the viewport from the camera is really important to make sure that's working but I'll I'll also go into you know the the viewport that isn't the camera and just toggle around to make sure it's not going towards camera and and away from camera in weird ways because sometimes that will cause problems later down down the line yeah and sometimes that solves problems like you'll see it in the in the camera like there's something kind of weird but I'm not figuring out what it is because I think it's working but sometimes you just toggle around for a bit and in figure it might be like a stray key or or or it's doing kind of a wonky movement that you can't really see from the camera view yeah oh there's something else I wanted to say when you are like prioritizing uh-huh you have like oh like this is the most important thing I need to make sure you get that first is that usually consistent or do you ever things sometimes it is yeah and some said okay I'm gonna first I'm gonna take care of the hips make sure that because that drives a lot of the things coming out out of it so if if you have a weird hitch there and you posh the hand and then you polish that the the hips later it's like what you had to counter animate to make it look okay here is now a parent again because this changed you know so it's like working away from the root outwards but it's something there are some shots where maybe the hips aren't what's leading the action so sometimes like if it's the head doing something you're gonna have to I kind of posh some things simultaneously a lot of times I'll kind of take care of the torso and the head first and then I'll worry about the arms and the legs afterwards do you ever turn things off or do you like what I know your workflows like it depends depends on the shot but if it's a very physical shot where those running and jumping and that kind of thing a lot of times after like my blocking pass and I start and I want to well actually even in my blocking pass I will sometimes just animate the the torso to get that right timing so it's it's not just even timing but maybe here it's it stops and then it jumps and then you know it has a good rhythm to it and I'll just turn off the limbs and just animate the torso and then turn them back on and later and kind of fear figure about but when I'm polishing yeah sometimes I'll turn off maybe the arms if I just want to work with the torso in the head and really see what's what's happening there I don't do it all the time but sometimes I do that if I feel like maybe if the arm is distracting me you know then I'll turn it off but a lot of times I also like to keep things on just because I don't want to change something in the torso and then realize that that oh I see why I did that weird little motion it's because the weight of the arm was is affecting the torso in some way yeah so a lot of times I'll do that after I do the torso then depending on if the arms are ika or FK if they're FK I'll just kind of work my way out too and a lot of times what I do when I polish is I actually am deleting keys because there might be too many keys that I had done and there's just it's not clean as it could be sometimes I'll just pick okay well I like this and I like this and I'll just delete everything between and usually it just makes a smooth motion and then I might adjust it cuz yeah a lot of times it feels like things just start getting really hectic and messy when you're polishing so I'm not afraid to just blow things up in a you know small way just to kind of clean things up but at the same time oh yes what I want to talk about in my workflow I I like to keep my keys organized throughout blocking so I'll have all you I'll have the whole character keyed on this one frame and then the breakdown and the in-betweens and things so if I need to read time things it's easy so I'll try and stay organized but once I start getting into polish I just like throw it all off all that organization out the window and I'll just okay like I don't care where these keys are like if I have to slide it over a little bit that's okay if I have to create me one and move it around and that's alright too you know I just kind of because at that point your performance and stuff is pretty much nailed down the the tweaks I do for polishing aren't gonna really you know right I'm not afraid to be disorganized since I get into polish I'm not so worried about keeping things on whole frames yeah you have to worry about like half frame it's like if you're you're you're scaling things and they end up when we you know am I usually like you can grab a set of keys and scale them oh yeah you ever do that and then yeah it's only half frame yeah I hate half frames I don't like that yeah so that just confuses me really badly so yeah when I do something like that if I scale keys out and they're on half frames I think there's a script that I used that would or that I use that like we'll take that that curve it without changing the curve it'll put keys on the whole frames that's that's better than like the snapping oh yeah by snapping the snapping doesn't work very well yeah like another thing I will do if I have to and it's not perfect but I will you know you hold I and you can insert key mm-hmm so I'll insert a key onto that curve and then delete everything like I'll insert a key on on five and insert a key on seven and then just blow away this subframes yeah do you have any other like graph editor workflow tips like anything that you spend a lot of time in there the thing I'm careful about in the graph editor is not to just to know exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing in there cuz like if I just go in and say oh this curve looks looks like really steep maybe I'll just even it out a little bit just so it looks nice and the graph editor you have to be careful with that because you might just make things water down so you have to know exact like know why you're doing what you're doing in the graph editor and and sometimes I will do like it overall just like hygiene on the curves to make sure you know cuz if it's flat and then it goes through that you know I'll just nudge it a little bit and usually it looks fine yeah but so I will just do like a beauty pass over some of the curves but just being really aware that you're not watering it down right but that you're you're strengthening the the arcs or the timing or the spacing or whatever that you're working with yeah one thing I do when I'm polishing is I look at the arcs I start with the hips I do I'll look at the elbows I'll look at the wrists and just track those in weather if you have a motion path tool they're using that's what I usually do or if you're like drawing with a dry erase marker on the board and you're just like putting a point on every frame where it's going just to really make sure that they're working there's no weird hitches so I'll do that with ya knees feet hips elbows with the head for sure I also do it like we're in the right here at the base of the neck so that makes sure that the the torso is moving right from from here to here and then I'll also a really big one is the nose make sure the nose isn't doing anything weird that you don't want it to be doing just being aware of those arcs and then other than arcs I'll another really important thing why not while I'm polishing is the overlapping action and follow-through a lot of times you fall into the trap of the torso feeling stiff so I might add some subtle squash and stretch in the torso or like maybe lead and follow with the torso so if the body is moving what is it is the head and the shoulders kind of leading it or is is the is the hips are the hips leaning in the in the the upper torso kind of like following behind you know I'll be aware of those things I make those decisions based on the performance and the acting and what is strengthening like what is the character saying what are they thinking and how will that affect their like physicality and then those that will inform the choices I make with lead and follow and and is the arm you know is the arm being led by the shoulder or is the hand leaving the action you know so I'm just being aware of that yeah so if I'm animating a run you know I'll add subtle squash up and down like the hips come up in the the head comes down and then comes up you know just to make it feel a little bit more organic and that's a big yeah that's another thing too is not just for the the acting is what drives those things but also just weight and body mechanics and that you know adding subtle offsets and things like that for those reasons too for example if I'm if I'm gonna breathe if I take a deep breath like I might add a subtle like I might have you know the chest expand and I might have the the chin come down first and then come up you know whereas before was polished it was just the head and everything kind of comes up at once so I would add a little bit of offset in that I might have done that already in blocking or I might do it you know it's just like depends on every shot but and then I might you know have the the shoulders kind of come up after to like continue to expand this area or whatever you know just I'm trying to think of ways to make my innovation feel organic and lifelike like organic nough sin the face mm-hmm yeah oh yeah so after I do the body I'll try and apply a lot of those other things that I talked about to the face as well so I'll track things on the face I'll track the mouth corners is a big one make sure it's not just moving back and forth and up and down but it's moving in arcs when it when it moves a lot of times when I'm doing the face I'll start with the jaw well specifically for dialogue and I'll make sure that jaw rotations are like working perfectly like the timing is exactly what needs to be I might copy that that curve and I'll I'll I'll copy it into maybe the cheeks you know or the also onto a layer or something on to the mouth corners like I might copy the the rotation at X or whatever your rig is for for this motion of the jaw and I will copy that on to the translate in and out for the mouth corners so that you know I might do that on a separate layer animation layer so it's not messing up via stuff I already have yeah but so like when you open your mouth from here down there's a subtle it goes in you know yeah a lot of times because it's kind of stretching and so like I'll copy curves to the eye to the cheeks maybe so when the when the jaw compresses you get a little bit of compression in the cheeks too so I'll do a little bit of that to make the face feel more organic I'll make sure the like corrugators like on the eyebrows are also sometimes movie in arcs and being aware of that just very subtle but that'll also help to make things feel again acting and same thing I'll work on the blinks that's I feel like a whole another like thing you'll talk about for a long time it's like how to make the blinks feel fleshy and natural but I'll definitely do a pass on on the mouth do the pass on the lids and eyebrow and I'll make sure that everything's working together that's another thing that's important is whatever the mouth is doing that everything else in the face or whatever is happening the eyes it's supported by the rest of the face line of action is another thing being aware of what the line of action is doing and why and if there's a point where you can reverse it for some sort of impact whether in like in an action an action shot in an acting shot - that's the word reversal yeah yeah but that that's more like of an animation principle I see a lot of work except another questions like what do you see lacking but like I see a lot of stuff where like people have a shot and the character doesn't really move much or if they do it's just like a leaner so there's not a change yeah in like shape or anything yeah so like for something like that if if a character leans down like this I might use the line of action to make a reversal so if I want the post to be like this mmm you know it would be making this kind of curve I might do the opposite of that curve right before just to make it feel a little bit more natural and to have a little bit of an impact it might be subtle but while I'm going down bring that line of action this way and then go into this instead of just straight to this aisle sometimes it just seems and Paul in the Polish phase for to get good silhouette reads and clear staging mmm so that's that's one thing who hands how involved you get with like hands and fingers before polish versus like when you hit that point like I try in and pose out the hands and blocking yeah I try my best to do that just because their hands are so expressive and can help so much with you know your acting and things like that that it the earlier you get it in there they're better but I'm not gonna lie a lot of times I'll just get lazy with the hands and just do them later but at least try I don't want to have like the paddle hand ever so even it I might just do a rough hand pass in blocking just at least to make it feel a little bit more natural and if it's essential for the acting then of course they all would have that inner blocking you probably see a lot of student work also or like just reals in general I guess when you look at people's stuff what are someone like the Polish things that lack that just you don't see people doing enough of or some common things that you would justifies like I you should probably polish this more in this way here yeah that kind of thing it's a tricky one because when I was a student I struggled with Polish because I knew it wasn't polished enough like it wasn't feature quality but I didn't know what I had to do to make it so you know to like bring it the Polish to a higher level I just didn't have the skills yet and that just comes with experience and and getting feedback if you have someone to look at your stuff that does know how to polish getting feedback from them oh like this you know tweak this thing this needs to be polished or this doesn't feel right that's the best way you know I feel like to kind of just develop your I it's just their experience but something that I see in student work I just I feel like I see a lack of polish overall in general I I feel like in student work the polishes isn't there and I think one thing that it's that you can do is to just because sometimes you get to the end of a shot and you're almost like okay like I'm I'm tired of this shot you know and you just kind of like have to say like okay I'm gonna go 110% and just stick it out a little longer and really put the care into into the Polish and really see if I can clean things up and make it be the best quality that can be to be more specific on things that I see lip sync is something that people struggle with with Polish that sometimes it just kind of feels chattery like in when you're animating dialogue you don't always have to to open your mouth on every single like every it's like you know they're doing that when it's really just every it's almost like one close of the jaw instead of every it's what students do I feel like sometimes when it just needs to be every you know so your style shot was just like yeah yeah yeah can you sit there slowly like oh okay like I put the own exactly yeah it's yeah you're reading the the the dialogue and saying oh I need a a shape no now I need this shape but you kind of have to force yourself to think in the south and not think about words and then in and kind of animate that yeah there's one thing that helps me I'll go in front of a mirror too and just say it to myself and see how my jaws actually moving and kind of analyze that I think the most important thing is that the acting and the performance is good a lot of times in student work I feel like students will will over animate things in a way that doesn't feel believable but that's just my taste maybe a lot of times my supervisors and the people I'm showing my work to at work will encourage me to try and say what I need to say with the fewest poses that I can get away with just boil it down to something very very clear and simple but like really effective and not just like gesturing all over the place and things you know yeah acting the performance and the ideas are the most important thing and the polish is is also really important but it comes second to if you like the the main ideas in the acting and performance and why the character is doing what they're doing their motivation and things so for anybody who might be watching that's like beginner intermediate level who probably haven't done that many character shots whether it is like you know a great body mechanic shot or if it's like acting hmm but they're getting to the place where they know they should polish and they do have some time I think another way to help your polishing is studying another animation that's it's really good like I would study stuff from ratatouille because like there are some really really good polished animation there especially on I loved all the work done on Skinner scanner yeah Skinner that's his name Skinner he this is some just really great stuff to look at and on the main guy Remy's human okay his name is linguini linguini oh my gosh yeah linguini Wow how did I'd like to seen it a billion times and I can't I couldn't even remember yeah but yeah there's some really great stuff like when he when he first goes into the kitchen mm-hmm and he's kind of like stumbling around there's like such a good stuff in there when he's applying to work in the kitchen oh right yeah he's like looking for the letter he he kind of like spins around like a dog chasing its tail for like a second like that such a cool toy yes and kind of going frame by frame and and seeing what those guys are doing and finding shots that really maybe impacted you and just kind of frame by Framing element and seeing how why things feel so organic or so natural yeah just just looking at what what they were doing and in how they approached that shot you just kind of study that [Music]

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Keywords: animation polish, polishing tips animation, animation polishing, polishing process animation, how to polish animation, animation polishing workflow, disney animator interview, disney animation polishing, how to animate like disney, disney animation workflow, animation workflow tips, animation workflow maya, animation workflow interview, animation interview, animation workflow help, how do i polish animation, pixar animation polish, how to become an animator, animation, disney

Id: ujo7aHa7DGQ

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018