While you are at school, you should spend as much time as possible working on your portfolio. You have the rest of your life to relax and have fun, college is the time set aside for preparing for your career. In an industry as competitive as ours, there is no room for the lazy. If you have applied to lots of places, and they have seen your portfolio, and they don't offer you a job, you are not good enough yet. Sometimes a single place isn't looking, or wants someone with more experience, but with the current state of the game industry, there is always a job for good people. Many companies will manufacture a position for someone if they are good enough even if they weren't currently looking. When that happens it is called an opportunity hire. Some students believe it's because they don't have enough experience. This is almost never the case. The reason companies list experience requirements for job listings, is to discourage the people who know that they currently aren't good from applying. No company will see an awesome portfolio, and then decide not to hire you based purely on not having any experience, unless it's for a senior or lead position. Remember you will always have people with experience and shipped titles competing with you for jobs, and they have been paid to work 40-80 hours a week for a while. If you are investing only 5-10, you aren't going to be catching up anytime soon.
Force: Dynamic Life Drawing should be studied first, along with Draw the Looney Tunes (provided that you have been studying drawing already, beyond the basics). Both books combined form what I like to call "The Art and Zen of Stylized Drawing", because they are not the standard drawing manuals that describe how to perfectly make a complex character from a sphere: rather, these teach you about the head game.
I like the expression "lost possibilities." To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, and a life. To exist here, now, means to lose the possibility of being countless other potential selves. For example, I might have been the captain of a pirate ship, sailing with a lovely princess by my side. It means giving up this universe, giving up other potential selves. There are selves which are lost possibilities, and selves that could have been, and this is not limited just to us but to the people around us and even to Japan itself.I've always had this thought, and yet Miyazaki NAILED it. Have you ever thought about every bit of possibility and potential you have left behind? I have. I could have gone into the military, I could have become a politician with aspirations for the presidency, I could have started an indy band and become the next big thing (for a little while), I could have gone into culinary arts and become a restaurant owner, I could have been born 50 years ago and been a scientist, I could have been born 100 years from now and gone out in the first mission to deep space... The possibilities were limitless, and, out of my own choices and the parameters set around me, I have endeavored to pursue the art of animation, in order to birth these worlds and present them to others to see. Whenever I tell a story, it's a little bit about me, and thankfully, I'm satisfied with that prospect, despite all the lost potential for greatness in other areas. Can you speak with the same satisfaction and resolution?
Yet once born,there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us. And in this sense I think that the animation we see today often lacks the vitality of older cartoon movies. Economic constraints in production are often said to be the main reason, but it seems to me that something spiritual is also missing. It would be stupid to turn my back on the times in which we live and act arrogrant about it all, but I always find myself thinking that the old cartoon movies were indeed more interesting and exciting that we have today.
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
-- Orson Welles
I feel like its our job is to know better, than the audience, what they want.
-- Andrew Stanton (quote from Spline Cast interview)
So I'm a fan of finding some good quotes whenever I can... Recently I've been listening to all of the Spline Doctor's podcasts, and they are good stuff, really. Their interviews have been some of my driving inspiration as of late. One of the most cutting ones was a quote from Brad Bird:
"To animate means to give the appearance of life, and you can’t create the illusion of life if you haven’t lived one."
It's tough being an animation student. You struggle from some of the toughest of things to learn about: there are really no "secrets" to animation. You either know how to do it, or (more importantly) how to learn how to do it, or you can't do it at all. The important thing is being a constant learner, something that isn't stressed enough anywhere. You never stop learning in any field, and animation is no exception. For instance, think about how many ways one could pick up a fork. A simple act, no? But that person could be upset, so would he pick it up, hands shaking with fury? What changes that from hands shaking in fear? What if he is bawling? Wouldn't his hands shake too in that situation? What makes each of those different?
Animation is such an intense study of subject matter: You can't just know the technical side of squash and stretch, and all the principal's of animation from the Illusion of Life... You need to have your eye's open recording everything around you constantly. I've noticed something recently: I don't hang out with people anymore, and if I do, I'm talking about animation. If I'm not talking, I'm watching the subtle cues of body language and taking it in as if it was a fine wine. I don't play video games anymore JUST for enjoyment, I do it to observe the story telling practices (A good example is Braid. The storytelling in that is brilliant). Learning the bouncing ball isn't enough. Learning the walk cycle isn't enough. Learning what makes things tick is what is important. Looking at the way someone swaggers is what is important. Observing the way people talk is the true secret to learning animation. The technical side of everything comes with time and patience. The hard part is observation and learning. In order to be an animator, you can't just be an animator. You have to be...
A Scientist - To study how things happen, and observe things through experimentation.
An Actor - To understand the methods of evoking emotion, and expressing it to the audience.
A Storyteller - To understand the methods of delivery, in order to tell the most effective story.
A Musician - To understand the painstaking process of rhythm and timing.
A Designer - To understand the points of composition, and what makes good compositions.
A Filmmaker - To understand film language, and cues to the audience.
A Linguist - To understand the rules of social interaction and speech.
And almost any other field applies. As an animator, you simply cannot know too much: you ALWAYS know too little. That's why its important to be able to practice finding resources. That's why youtube is one of the greatest inventions known to the modern animator: almost limitless resources for the taking, reference footage for almost whatever you need! And for a small cost of a digital camera, you can record your own references, cheaply and easily. Animator's now have more resources than ever. And yet, sadly, I have seen nothing as great as an accomplishment as what Frank Thomas did in Pinocchio. This is borrowed from Michael Sporn's Animation Blog. I'd suggest you read his full post, along with all the images on it... It's magical stuff that Frank Thomas accomplished. I'd also watch Pinocchio if you have the chance, they did a rerelease of it with some great featurettes on the old days with Walt.
Hope you other animator's find this inspiring, or interesting, or at the very least informational. All other readers, I hope you learn to appreciate what a fine and intricate art that animation is. Animation is the illusion of life, and that is one of the hardest things to master.
My next editorial will be on advise from peers, professors, and industry people.
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Hopefully soon I'll have the time/money to get in this program. Either way, the resources they provide for free are invaluable as an animation student!
